Boeing on Tuesday agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by a Canadian man whose parents and sister were killed in a 737 Max crash in Ethiopia in 2019.
Attorneys for the plaintiff announced the settlement Wednesday, after jury selection had taken place and just before opening statements were set to begin.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, flown with a 737 Max 8, crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport (HAAB), killing all 157 people on board. It was one of two fatal 737 Max crashes that forced a global grounding of the type and an FAA investigation.
Plaintiff Manant Vaidya of Toronto lost his parents, Pannagesh and Hansini Vaidya, and sister Kosha Vaidya in the accident. Also killed were Kosha’s husband, Preritkumar Dixit, and their two children, Ashka and Anushka Dixit.
The Vaidya family lived in Canada at the time of the crash and was traveling during the girls’ spring break.
“Boeing accepted full responsibility for the senseless and preventable loss of these innocent lives, and this corporate giant has now been held accountable to this family, especially to this good man who lost his dear mom, dad, and sister,” Robert Clifford, founder and senior partner of Clifford Law Offices, said in a statement.
Investigators ultimately linked the 737 Max crashes to the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which forced both flights into a nose-down position based on faulty data.
Boeing acknowledged the system’s role in the crashes and last year entered a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. government that will require it to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.
In November, the company reached a $35.8 million settlement with the family of an Indian woman who was killed in the crash in Ethiopia. Boeing has settled other cases tied to the crashes out of court.
