Boeing in court as planemaker faces civil claim over Ethiopian B737 MAX crash

After years of legal wranglings, the Boeing Company will finally find itself in a US courtroom on April 7, 2025, as the planemaker defends a civil claim in respect of the accident involving an Ethiopian Airline Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in 2019 leading to the deaths of all onboard. The hearing itself will be significant as it marks the first time that the company has wound up in court over either criminal or civil proceedings resulting from the fatal accident.

The Ethiopian Airlines aircraft had only been in service with the carrier for four months when it crashed on March 10, 2019, just six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa-Bole International Airport (ADD) on its way to Nairobi in Kenya, killing all 157 people on board. Relatives of the victims sued Boeing between April 2019 and March 2021 for wrongful death, negligence, and other charges.

This civil trial, which is being held in Chicago, is expected to last two weeks and was originally brought against Boeing by the families of two of the passengers who died in the accident. However, it was reported by AFP that late on Sunday, April 6, 2025, on the eve of the trial, one of the claimants reached an eleventh-hour settlement with the company bringing an end to their claim. Such out-of-court settlements have already been reached with dozens of other claimants since the crash.

Ronen Fefer / Shutterstock.comThe trial, due to begin on April 7. 2025, involves the case of a Canadian passenger on the Ethiopian Airlines jet, Darcy Belanger. Belanger, 46, who lived in Colorado, was a founding member of environmental NGO, the Parvati Foundation, and also worked in construction. He had been visiting Nairobi for a UN conference.

“We have had some ongoing discussion that may continue throughout the day and the ensuing days,” Robert Clifford, who represents relatives of several crash victims, told the US District Court on April 2, 2025, at a pre-trial hearing, as reported by Yahoo News. Some commentators are still speculating that a last-minute deal could still be reached with the other claimant either before the trial begins or as it progresses.

As of late March 2025, there remained 18 claims still ongoing against Boeing, a source familiar with the case told AFP.

To date, details including the quantum of Boeing’s settlements with the various civil claimants that have been reached have remained confidential. The US manufacturer “accepted responsibility for the MAX crashes publicly and in civil litigation, because the design of the MCAS contributed to these events,” a Boeing lawyer said during an October 2024 hearing.

Airlines suspended the use of Boeing’s new 737 MAX 8 planes after after an Ethiopian Airlines flight of the same model crashed Sunday killing all 157 on board.@McKenzieCNN is at the crash site where emergency workers are trying to I.D. the bodies. https://t.co/YzBhDBCCUr pic.twitter.com/DjLm3bbytZ— CNN (@CNN) March 11, 2019 Boeing’s MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) flight stabilizing software was implicated in the involving the Ethiopian Airlines accident as well as another MAX crash involving a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 in October 2018 in which 189 people died. NTSB investigators concluded that the MCAS software installed on these two aircraft (as well as all other MAX series aircraft) was faulty and contained errors, leading to the two airliners stalling and the crew being unable to regain control.  

The entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded for more than 20 months as a consequence of these two accidents, while investigations were carried out and conclusions reached. Boeing later revised its MCAS software under close scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which ultimately cleared the 737 MAX family of narrowbodies to resume commercial services in November 2020.

More ongoing legal action

While Boeing also faced dozens of civil claims from the families of the Lion Air crash victims, just one case remained open as of the end of March 2025, according to AFP. The company is also due to face a potential criminal trial in June to be held in Texas over the MAX accidents, following a deferred prosecution agreement between Boeing and the US Justice Department over the crashes.

In May 2024, the Justice Department notified the court that Boeing had violated the terms of the agreement, following a mid-air incident involving an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane. In March 2025, a US District Judge ordered a jury trial to begin on June 23, 2025, after earlier throwing out a proposed settlement reached in principle between Boeing and the Justice Department.

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