Stewarts has added further claims to their wrongful death lawsuit filed against Boeing in Federal Court, Chicago. Rebecca Smith looks at these claims.
This lawsuit alleges a combination of defective design and failure to warn pilots of problems with the Boeing 737 Max flight control systems which resulted in the crash of ET302 on 10 March 2019.
ET302 was a scheduled passenger flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew onboard which crashed in a farm field near Bishoftu only minutes after take off on 10 March 2019. It was a new plane, only a few months old.
The investigation into the crash is ongoing, but from an interim report released by the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority earlier this month, it is expected that investigators will conclude that the crash was caused by the faulty design of the flight control system.
The similarities in the aircraft and the investigative findings for this accident and the earlier crash of Lion Air JT610 in October 2018 point to a common cause. Shortly after taking off and while attempting to climb, pilots for both aircraft reported flight control issues as the planes pitched up and down erratically throughout the sky.
Due to early concerns over similarities between ET302 and Lion Air JT610, in the days following this tragedy, the US Federal Aviation Authority grounded all 737 Max aircraft in service with 59 airlines worldwide making 8600 flights each week. This has become the longest grounding ever of a US airliner.
It is expected that the new court filings will be consolidated with a number of actions already being brought in the US on behalf of those killed. The litigation in the US is still in its infancy with the focus now turning to discovery and what Boeing knew following Lion Air JT610.
Although it may be many months before any jury trial, we remain committed to securing answers for our clients along with the compensation they rightly deserve.
Sarah Stewart, partner commented:
“Over the months which have followed this tragedy, the families have heard about Boeing’s technical design failures, they have listened to descriptions of concealment and poor oversight by regulating bodies. They now want to see Boeing’s attention drawn to them, to those who have lost the most, and to hear that their loved ones did not die in vain”
We are working alongside Wisner Law Firm in Chicago on this case.
Stewarts and Wisner were retained by a number of families who lost loved ones in Lion Air Flight JT610 and successfully resolved those claims against Boeing earlier this year.
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