DOJ may drop case against Boeing over deadly 737 Max crashes, despite families' outrage

Relatives of victims clasp a placard with photos of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 clang successful March 2019, anterior to a proceeding successful Fort Worth, Texas, successful January 2023. Shelby Tauber/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Shelby Tauber/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice is considering dropping its transgression lawsuit against Boeing implicit 2 fatal crashes of 737 Max jets, according to lawyers for family members of the clang victims who met with prosecutors connected Friday.

Boeing agreed past twelvemonth to plead blameworthy to defrauding regulators aft the crashes of 2 737 Max jets, successful 2018 and 2019, that killed 346 people. But a national justice rejected that projected plea deal.

Now the Justice Department is weighing different statement that would let Boeing to debar transgression prosecution. The institution would hold alternatively to a non-criminal colony that would see $444.5 cardinal for a clang victims' fund.

Lawyers for immoderate of the household members accidental they're outraged by the projected deal, and said they program to combat it successful court.

"This isn't justice," said Erin Applebaum, an lawyer astatine the steadfast Kreindler & Kreindler, successful a statement. "It's a backroom woody dressed up arsenic a ineligible proceeding, and it sends a unsafe message: successful America, the affluent and almighty tin bargain their mode retired of accountability."

The Department of Justice did not respond to a petition for comment. A spokesperson for Boeing declined to comment.

Under the erstwhile woody announced past year, Boeing had agreed to plead blameworthy to a azygous number of conspiracy to defraud regulators astir the information of its planes. But U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor successful Texas objected to the model that Boeing and the Justice Department crafted to prime an autarkic monitor, insisting the tribunal should play a bigger role.

The acting caput of the DOJ Criminal Division's Fraud Section said a last determination had not been reached, according to lawyers for the household members.

"We anticipation that this bizarre program volition beryllium rejected by the enactment of the Department," said Paul Cassell, a instrumentality prof astatine the University of Utah and erstwhile national justice who is representing the families of the victims for free. In a statement, Cassell said his clients would impulse Judge O'Connor to cull this agreement, arsenic well.

"Dismissing the lawsuit would dishonor the memories of 346 victims, who Boeing killed done its callous lies," Cassell wrote.