A historic decision was made by a court in Chicago as it sentenced compensation $28 million to a widow of a victim of the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 crash who had sued Boeing.
Jurors in the Boeing trial, which has been ongoing since November 3 in a Chicago federal court in the US, have awarded $28.45 million in damages to the widow of a victim of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 crash in 2019, with him declaring satisfaction.
Soumya Bhattasaria lost his wife Shikha Garg in the March 2019 plane crash, a few months after another Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in October 2018. A total of 346 people died in the two crashes.
Boeing admitted as early as 2019 that a flight control software it had installed on its 737 MAX planes contributed to those crashes.
The court ultimately heard only the case of New Delhi resident Shikha Garg, as Boeing reached a settlement with plaintiffs in another appeal, on the second day of hearings.
Jurors decided, after two hours of deliberation, to award a total of $28.45 million to Batasaria.
Boeing attorney Dan Webb said at the start of the trial that the company agrees “that it should pay significant damages” to Batasaria, but “we just disagree on the amount.”
Also yesterday, in his closing remarks, Webb expressed Boeing’s “regret” for the victims and turned to Garg’s widower to apologize on behalf of the company.
On March 10, 2019, a Boeing MAX 8, operating Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, crashed southeast of the Ethiopian capital six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 on board.
Unjustified death
Relatives of 155 victims filed lawsuits against the US company from April 2019 to March 2021 for wrongful death and negligence, among other things.
At the start of the trial in Garg’s death, 11 appeals remained open. Boeing has since settled three of them out of court.
At the same time, many appeals have been filed in the USA after the Lion Air plane crash, of which only one remains open.
Boeing has clarified that it has paid out “several billions of dollars” to beneficiaries.
At the same time, Boeing and the US Department of Justice have reached an agreement, which was announced on May 23, and provides for the payment of 1.1 billion dollars by the company, of which 444.5 million dollars will be allocated to a compensation fund for the families of the victims.