By Staff, Agencies

A federal jury in Chicago has ordered Boeing to pay $49.5 million to the family of a victim killed in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash, one of two deadly disasters linked to the troubled aircraft model.

The ruling concerns the death of Samya Stumo, who was among the 157 passengers and crew killed when the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019.

The tragedy came just months after another Boeing 737 MAX operated by Lion Air crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. The two catastrophes led to the global grounding of the aircraft for nearly 20 months after Boeing acknowledged that flaws in the jet’s flight-control system played a central role in both crashes.

According to attorneys representing the Stumo family, jurors awarded $21 million for pain and emotional suffering, $16.5 million for loss of companionship, and $12 million for grief-related damages.

Although Boeing accepted liability in the case, lawyers for the family plan to seek the reinstatement of punitive damages claims that were dismissed during the proceedings.

The verdict follows another major ruling issued last November, when a jury ordered Boeing to pay $28.45 million to the family of Shikha Garg, another victim of the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

Boeing has faced dozens of lawsuits tied to the 737 MAX crashes, with many cases resolved through confidential settlements reportedly worth billions of dollars.

In 2021, the aerospace giant entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with US authorities, agreeing to pay $2.5 billion after admitting it misled the Federal Aviation Administration about defects in the 737 MAX flight-control system.

Federal prosecutors later concluded in 2024 that Boeing had violated the terms of that agreement. However, under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice dropped efforts to force the company to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge.

A federal judge in Texas approved the DOJ’s move to dismiss the criminal case last November, and an appeals court upheld that decision earlier this year.