US jury awards $37.1 million damages to Boeing 737 MAX victim's family

NEW YORK - A Chicago jury awarded US$29 million (S$37.1 million) in damages to the family of an Irish-born United Nations employee who died in a 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crash, a US court spokesman said on Aug 12.

The civil suit was brought against Boeing by Naoise Connolly Ryan, widow of Michael “Mick” Ryan, an engineer with the UN World Food Programme who was one of the victims in the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people on board.

Ryan had worked during the Ebola crisis in Liberia and with Rohingya refugees. A UN memorial page to Ryan, who was 39 at the time of the crash, also recognised his work Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Ethiopia.

The case is one of the final remaining civil suits pending against Boeing following the pair of deadly MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together claimed 346 lives.

The vast majority of claims have been settled out of court with undisclosed terms, but Naoise Ryan’s attorney Steven Marks had described his client as “committed to seeking accountability and justice from a jury and not accepting money from Boeing directly”.

Boeing has apologised for the crashes and acknowledged that anti-stall software was implicated in both accidents.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In May, a Chicago jury awarded US$49.5 million in damages to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American who was killed on the same Ethiopian Airlines flight.