Boeing evades MAX crash trial with last-minute settlement
By AFP
July 11, 2025
Boeing has accepted responsibility for the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, in which 157 people died - Copyright AFP/File TONY KARUMBA
Elodie MAZEIN
Boeing has reached a settlement with a man whose family died in a 737 MAX crash in 2019, a law firm told AFP on Friday, meaning the US aviation giant will avoid a federal trial slated for Monday.
Paul Njoroge, who lost his wife and three children in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in which 157 people died, was to seek damages from Boeing in a case in Chicago.
“The case has settled for a confidential amount,” said a spokesperson for Clifford Law, the firm representing Njoroge, whose mother-in-law also died in the crash.
“The aviation team at Clifford Law Offices has been working round-the-clock in preparation for trial, but the mediator was able to help the parties come to an agreement on behalf of Paul Njoroge,” added Robert Clifford, a senior partner at Clifford, in a statement.
Until now, Boeing has succeeded in avoiding civil trials connected to the 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019, reaching a series of settlements, sometimes only hours before trials were set to begin.
The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019 took place six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi.
Njoroge lost his wife Carolyne, who was 33, his mother-in-law Ann Karanja, and the couple’s three children: six-year-old Ryan; Kelli, who was four; and nine-month-old Rubi.
Njoroge told a congressional panel in July 2019 he was haunted by ideas of the final moments of the flight, how his children “must have clung to their mother, crying, seeing the fright in her eyes.”
“It is difficult for me to think of anything else but the horror they must have felt,” he said. “I cannot get it out of my mind.”
The trial set for Monday was expected to last five to seven days.
Between April 2019 and March 2021, family members of 155 Boeing victims joined litigation charging the aviation giant with wrongful death and negligence.
Boeing has accepted responsibility for the Ethiopian Airlines crash, blaming the design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight handling system that malfunctioned.
That system was also implicated in the Lion Air crash in 2018, when the 737 MAX 8 fell into the sea after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
The Lion Air crash also spawned dozens of lawsuits in the United States. But as of July 2025, only one case remained open.
Boeing has said it has reached out-of-court agreements with more than 90 percent of civil complainants in the MAX cases.
The company also has a settlement pending that would resolve a long-running Department of Justice criminal probe connected to the MAX crashes.
Some MAX families are contesting the Department of Justice’s accord with Boeing, arguing that the company should face federal prosecution. US District Judge Reed O’Connor, in Texas, has yet to make a final decision on the proposed accord.
By AFP
July 11, 2025
Boeing has accepted responsibility for the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, in which 157 people died - Copyright AFP/File TONY KARUMBA
Elodie MAZEIN
Boeing has reached a settlement with a man whose family died in a 737 MAX crash in 2019, a law firm told AFP on Friday, meaning the US aviation giant will avoid a federal trial slated for Monday.
Paul Njoroge, who lost his wife and three children in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in which 157 people died, was to seek damages from Boeing in a case in Chicago.
“The case has settled for a confidential amount,” said a spokesperson for Clifford Law, the firm representing Njoroge, whose mother-in-law also died in the crash.
“The aviation team at Clifford Law Offices has been working round-the-clock in preparation for trial, but the mediator was able to help the parties come to an agreement on behalf of Paul Njoroge,” added Robert Clifford, a senior partner at Clifford, in a statement.
Until now, Boeing has succeeded in avoiding civil trials connected to the 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019, reaching a series of settlements, sometimes only hours before trials were set to begin.
The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019 took place six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi.
Njoroge lost his wife Carolyne, who was 33, his mother-in-law Ann Karanja, and the couple’s three children: six-year-old Ryan; Kelli, who was four; and nine-month-old Rubi.
Njoroge told a congressional panel in July 2019 he was haunted by ideas of the final moments of the flight, how his children “must have clung to their mother, crying, seeing the fright in her eyes.”
“It is difficult for me to think of anything else but the horror they must have felt,” he said. “I cannot get it out of my mind.”
The trial set for Monday was expected to last five to seven days.
Between April 2019 and March 2021, family members of 155 Boeing victims joined litigation charging the aviation giant with wrongful death and negligence.
Boeing has accepted responsibility for the Ethiopian Airlines crash, blaming the design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight handling system that malfunctioned.
That system was also implicated in the Lion Air crash in 2018, when the 737 MAX 8 fell into the sea after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
The Lion Air crash also spawned dozens of lawsuits in the United States. But as of July 2025, only one case remained open.
Boeing has said it has reached out-of-court agreements with more than 90 percent of civil complainants in the MAX cases.
The company also has a settlement pending that would resolve a long-running Department of Justice criminal probe connected to the MAX crashes.
Some MAX families are contesting the Department of Justice’s accord with Boeing, arguing that the company should face federal prosecution. US District Judge Reed O’Connor, in Texas, has yet to make a final decision on the proposed accord.
A Byronic Ode to Boeing
July 11, 2025
(Apologies to His Lordship … and inspired by His Hackship Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who recently characterized Boeing’s series of deadly crashes as “past missteps.”)
So I’ll fly no more on Boeing
So high into the sky,
Though the fares be e’er so tempting —
For I just don’t wish to die.
For the engineering’s sketchy
And the workmanship is trash.
And the planes they sometimes wobble —
Then they tilt, and plunge, and crash.
Though the sky was made for soaring,
Like a hawk that circles high.
Yet I’ll no more board a Boeing —
For I’m not so keen to die.
family died in 737 MAX crash
Paul Njoroge, representing the families of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, testifies before a House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee hearing on "State of Aviation Safety" in the aftermath of two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes since October, in Washington DC, US, on July 17, 2019.
PHOTO: Reuters
PUBLISHED July 11, 2025 \
Boeing reached a settlement with a Canadian man whose family died in the March 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX, the man's lawyer said on Friday (July 11).
The terms of the settlement with Paul Njoroge of Toronto were not released. The 41-year-old man's wife Carolyne and three young children - Ryan, 6, Kellie, 4, and nine-month-old Rubi - died in the crash. His mother-in-law was travelling with them and also died in the crash.
The trial was scheduled to start on Monday in US District Court in Chicago and would have been the first against the US planemaker stemming from two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together killed 346 people.
Boeing also averted a trial in April, when it settled with the families of two other victims in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
The planemaker declined to comment on the latest settlement.
The two accidents led to a 20-month grounding of the company's best-selling jet and cost Boeing more than $20 billion (S$25 billion).
In another trial that is scheduled to begin on Nov 3, Njoroge's attorney Robert Clifford will be representing the families of six more victims.
Boeing has settled more than 90 per cent of the civil lawsuits related to the two accidents, paying out billions of dollars in compensation through lawsuits, a deferred prosecution agreement and other payments, according to the company.
Boeing and the US Justice Department asked a judge earlier this month to approve an agreement that allows the company to avoid prosecution, over objections from relatives of some of the victims of the two crashes.
The agreement would enable Boeing to avoid being branded a convicted felon and to escape oversight from an independent monitor for three years. It was part of a plea deal struck in 2024 to a criminal fraud charge that it misled US regulators about a crucial flight 737 MAX control system which contributed to the crashes.
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