Boeing agrees deal 737 Max crash with families of Ethiopia victims
The planemaker accepts liability for their deaths, according to court documents in Chicago. In return, the families of the victims will not seek punitive damages from the company.
Lawyers for the victims' families said Boeing would still be held "fully accountable", welcoming the agreement as a significant milestone. Boeing shares fell 1% to $218.50 on the news.
The agreement opens the way for families outside the US, in countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya, to claim compensation through the US courts rather than in their home countries, which might be more complex and result in lower payments.
Mark Pegram in the UK, whose son Sam was one of the victims, said: "The main positive for us is that Boeing is admitting liability, and not diverting blame onto Ethiopian Airlines or the pilots... we wanted them to hold their hands up."
Sam's mother, Debbie, said, "All we are looking to do with any compensation is set up a charity in Sam's name. It's what we want to do, and it's what Sam would have wanted us to do."At the time of the crash, the 737 Max was Boeing's best-selling plane.
But two fatal accidents within five months - the Ethiopia Airlines flight out of Addis Ababa and before that a Lion Air jet that came down into the sea off Indonesia - signalled severe faults with the aircraft.
The planes were grounded for 20 months while investigations took place but have since been allowed to return to operations after making significant changes to its software and training. Words are essential, and in this agreement, Boeing accepts responsibility for the crash of ET302 - a disaster that claimed the lives of 157 people from 35 different countries.
The world may have moved on and the 737 Max may be flying again, but for many of the families of those who died, the grief and sense of loss remain very raw indeed. In the period since the two accidents involving the 737 Max, Boeing has faced criticism for appearing to deflect blame elsewhere, for example, by questioning the pilots' abilities.
So that admission of liability does matter. For Boeing, the agreement provides some protection by removing the possibility of relatives seeking potentially very great punitive damages and making it unlikely current or former executives will be called to testify in court.
Alongside the settlement reached in a lawsuit bought by shareholders last week - who had been suing the company over unsafe business practices - it removes much of the legal jeopardy the aerospace giant had been facing.
But the company has made a significant concession. It has been agreed that all compensation claims can be made under US law, which provides much higher compensation levels than would apply in many other countries.
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