Boeing has reached a last-minute settlement in one of two lawsuits over the 2019 737 MAX crash. lawyers announced on Wednesday. TASR writes about it according to AFP.
The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on March 10, 2019, six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa in the direction of Nairobi. The cause was faulty flight stabilization software. All 157 people on board died, and among the victims from 35 countries were also the wife and children of the former member of the Slovak parliament, Anton Hrenko. The fourth Slovak victim was a charity worker a project manager Danica Olexová.
The first civil trial related to the crash was set to begin after lawyers completed jury selection on Tuesday. Even before opening statements, plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Clifford announced that one of the two plaintiffs reached a settlement with Boeing. He added that the amount of the settlement is confidential. The plaintiffs in the settled case are the relatives of one of the passengers, Mercy Ndiva (28), who died together with her husband and their daughter became an orphan.
During Wednesday’s court proceedings, her father, Frederick Ndivo, thanked federal judge Jorge Alonso. “We are very grateful. We wish that the legal system of the United States will continue to uphold the rights of the people … the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said.
In the lawsuits, family members alleged wrongful death and neglect. Judge Alonso divided the cases into groups of five or six plaintiffs at a time. In previous rounds, he canceled the proceedings after all the cases in the group were settled. The dispute centers on how to calculate the monetary damages Boeing owes the plaintiffs.
