A federal appeals court has denied a request from dozens of families to reopen a criminal case against Boeing over two fatal 737 Max crashes more than seven years ago.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the families had argued that the U.S. Department of Justice failed to properly consult them before reaching a deal last year with Boeing that led a lower court to dismiss a criminal conspiracy charge against the company. The charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing misled federal regulators about a flight-control system linked to the crashes, which killed 346 people.<\/p>\n
In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it disagreed with the families’ claims that federal prosecutors had violated their rights under the Crime Victims\u2019 Rights Act and therefore could not revive the case.<\/p>\n
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling \u201cbadly flawed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe victims\u2019 families were never given a meaningful opportunity to shape the negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing, dating back to 2020,\u201d Cassell said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The aircraft manufacturer declined to comment, but at a hearing last month in New Orleans before the appellate court, Boeing attorney Paul Clement said more than 60 other families \u201caffirmatively supported\u201d the deal and dozens more did not oppose it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoeing deeply regrets\u201d the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and \u201chas taken extraordinary steps to improve its internal processes and has paid substantial compensation\u201d to the victims\u2019 families.<\/p>\n
The deal allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims\u2019 families, and internal safety and quality measures.<\/p>\n
At the same hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the government has, for years, “solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims\u2019 families as it\u2019s decided whether and how to prosecute the Boeing Company.\u201d<\/p>\n
All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 \u2014 a Lion Air flight that plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into a field shortly after takeoff.<\/p>\n
Catherine Berthet, whose daughter Camille Geoffroy was among the 157 killed in the second crash, said she is \u201csad and outraged\u201d by the court\u2019s decision. The ruling, she said in a statement, highlights the criminal justice system\u2019s \u201cinability to see where the public\u2019s and passengers\u2019 best interests truly lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the government but agreed not to prosecute if the company paid a settlement and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors later determined in 2024 that Boeing had violated that agreement, and the company agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But U.S. District Judge Reed O\u2019Connor in Texas, who oversaw the case for years, rejected the plea deal and directed the two sides to resume negotiations.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department returned last May with the new deal and a request to withdraw the criminal charge altogether, which O’Connor approved in November. Prosecutors argued that going to trial carried the risk that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely.<\/p>\n
In dismissing the case, O’Connor said prosecutors hadn\u2019t acted in bad faith and had explained their decision and met their obligations under the Crime Victims\u2019 Rights Act.<\/p>\n
O’Connor also said that case law prevented him from blocking the dismissal simply because he disagreed with the government\u2019s view that the new deal with Boeing served the public interest.<\/p>\n
The case centered around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max, which airlines began flying in 2017. Boeing billed it as an update to its 737 family that wouldn\u2019t require much additional pilot training.<\/p>\n
But the Max did include significant changes \u2014 most notably, the addition of an automated flight-control system designed to help account for the plane\u2019s larger engines. Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified it for flight.<\/p>\n
In both of the fatal crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and the pilots were unable to regain control.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne can only hope that another Boeing crash won\u2019t be the outcome of this badly flawed ruling,\u201d Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal appeals court has denied a request from dozens of families to reopen a criminal case against Boeing over two fatal 737 Max crashes more than seven years ago. Lawyers for the families had argued that the U.S. Department of Justice failed to properly consult them before reaching a deal last year with Boeing … Continue reading US appeals court denies bid from families of Boeing 737 Max crash victims to reopen criminal case<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1493001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 13:25:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1493001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493242,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493001\/revisions\/1493242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1493001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1493001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1493001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}