As Boeing faces new scrutiny, families of Max crash victims still in limbo

Mark Lindquist, a Tacoma, Washington-based attorney who represents one of the victims’ families from the 2019 crash whose case remains open, said he thinks Boeing had expected that time would work in its favor, and that a jury would be more forgiving years after the Max crashes. The January panel blowout changed that, he said.

“Boeing has slow-played these cases for more than five years,” Lindquist said. “When you’re a high-profile company the public has an interest in, they need to just accept responsibility to move forward. Part of accepting responsibility is to resolve these cases fairly.”

Bob Clifford, an attorney whose firm represented more than 70 families who lost loved ones from the Ethiopia Max crash, said the litigation against Boeing is likely to last into 2025, nearing the six-year anniversary of the fatal crash. For the families, the legal process has been emotionally draining and far from satisfying.

Though some of the remaining cases may settle before a scheduled November trial, other families are set on taking the case to a jury, Clifford said.

“There are some people who demand that there be a public reckoning of Boeing’s criminality and wrongdoing — and they would rather a jury decide.”

'A human being'

Now, all but two of the families of victims of the 2018 crash near Jakarta, Indonesia, have settled with the company, according to attorneys from the X-Law Group representing individuals in one of the remaining cases.

Shortly after the 2019 crash, most victims’ families filed lawsuits against Boeing in federal court in Illinois, where the company was headquartered at the time.

With 157 people on board — 149 passengers and 8 crew members — there were 142 cases filed, Clifford said.

In 2021, two years later, all but two of those families agreed to a stipulation with Boeing that required the company to admit wrongdoing and the plaintiffs to agree not to pursue punitive damages or demand information from Boeing that would dig deeper into what went wrong. Following the stipulation, Boeing admitted that it had “produced an airplane that had an unsafe condition.”

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