Families of Boeing crash victims can challenge US settlement, judge rules

A federal judge in Texas on Friday handed a significant victory to relatives of the victims of two deadly Boeing 737 Max crashes who are seeking to overturn a $2.5b legal settlement between Boeing and the Justice Department and to pursue criminal charges against the company. In a strongly worded ruling, Judge Reed O’Connor wrote that “the court finds that the tragic loss of life that resulted from the two airplane crashes was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of Boeing’s conspiracy to defraud the United States.” That being the case, he said, the 346 people who were killed in the crashes in 2018 and 2019 qualify as “crime victims” under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. “Now we get a chance to go in front of the judge to say the remedy for this is to throw out this rotten deal and try to get Boeing the corporation criminally prosecuted and its leadership criminally prosecuted for its crimes that led to the deaths of 346 people,” said Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who has represented relatives of victims in the case pro bono. A spokesman for Boeing declined to comment on Friday. The Justice Department also declined to comment on the ruling. The relatives of some of the crash victims said the deferred prosecution agreement between the Justice Department and the company violated their rights. The deal, which resolved a criminal charge that Boeing had conspired to defraud the FAA, was struck last year in the waning days of the Trump administration. As a result, Boeing agreed to establish a $500m fund to compensate the families of those who died, pay a fine of nearly $244m and pay $1.77b in compensation to airlines. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland participated in a video call with some of the victims’ families and their representatives in January but has stood by the deal.<br/>