A Boeing 737 Max jet, piloted by the FAA, prepares to land at Boeing Field following a test flight on Sept. 30, 2020 in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File); With protesters in the audience, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun waits to testify at the Capitol on June 18, 2024, weeks before the DOJ announced a plea agreement (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File).
After the U.S. Department of Justice revealed Sunday that it agreed to a deal that would see Boeing plead guilty to felony fraud in connection with Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes that killed 346 passengers and crew within five months in 2018 and 2019, several family members of victims voiced full-throated opposition to the move — setting the stage for arguments in Texas federal court in the coming days and weeks.
The move from DOJ comes months after an alarming Alaska Airlines incident and Boeing’s alleged breach of an airline safety-focused deferred prosecution agreement, and weeks after Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun appeared in Washington, D.C., and apologized publicly to crash victims’ families.
The DOJ-backed plea agreement with Boeing, however, faces clear opposition, as Naoise Connolly Ryan leads more than a dozen “similarly situated” families who maintain that the deal “unfairly makes concessions to Boeing that other criminal defendants would never receive and fails to hold Boeing accountable for the deaths of 346 persons.”
Attorney Paul G. Cassell, a law professor and former federal judge who went on to represent Jeffrey Epstein victims, attorneys with Clifford Law Offices PC, Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, and Podhurst Orseck PA, filed a letter Sunday informing U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor that they will oppose “the generous plea agreement” when the jurist sets a briefing schedule, as the deal, in their view, “rests on deceptive and offensive premises.”
The DOJ, for its part, over the weekend notified victims’ families of the agreement in principle and what a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. conviction would entail for Boeing.
“The parties have agreed in principle to the material terms of a plea agreement that would, among other things, hold Boeing accountable for its material misstatements to the Federal Aviation Administration, require Boeing to pay the statutory maximum fine, require Boeing to invest at least $455 million in its compliance and safety programs, impose an independent compliance monitor, and allow the Court to determine the restitution amount for the families in its discretion, consistent with applicable law,” the letter said, noting that the judge will still have to sign off on any deal before it is final.
There are a couple of notable pieces in the agreement.
According to the DOJ, while the deal would resolve Boeing’s criminal liability for “any other criminal offense related to the conduct described in the [deferred prosecution agreement] Statement of Facts,” it would not immunize the company from prosecution “for any other conduct, including any conduct that may be the subject of any ongoing or future Government investigation” (perhaps the Alaska Airlines blowout?)
In addition, Boeing would face a second $243.6 million dollar fine and would be placed on probation with “special conditions,” including facing “independent compliance” monitoring for a period of three years, the letter says.
Other conditions would require Boeing’s board to “meet with the families of the crash victims” and force Boeing to invest close to half a billon dollars in “compliance and safety programs.”
In the view of Cassell and several of the victims’ families, however, DOJ is failing under these terms to hold Boeing and its executives accountable in a meaningful way for the Boeing 737 Max crash tragedies and lingering safety concerns.
Cassell said that that the agreement is a “sweetheart deal” that will only tend to shield Boeing from bad corporate profit-over-passenger safety facts that he and other lawyers on the case suggested would come out if there were a jury trial.
“This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing’s conspiracy, 346 people died. Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime are being hidden,” he said in a statement. “A judge can reject a plea deal that is not in the public interest, and this deceptive and unfair deal is clearly not in the public interest. We plan to ask Judge O’Connor to use his recognized authority to reject this inappropriate plea and simply set the matter for a public trial, so that all the facts surrounding the case will be aired in a fair and open forum before a jury.”
Javier de Luis, Zipporah Kuria, and Ike Riffel, surviving family members of crash victims, each echoed Cassell’s remarks in statements.
De Luis, an aerospace engineer whose sister Graziella was killed on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, said the DOJ will bear responsibility the next time a Boeing plane crashes.
“This agreement ignores Judge O’Connor’s finding that Boeing’s fraud was directly responsible for the deaths of 346 people. It ignores the Fifth Circuit’s observation that an agreement such as this fundamentally needs to serve the manifest public interest of improving aviation safety,” he said. “When the next crash happens, every DoJ official that signed off on this deal will be as responsible as the Boeing executives that refuse to put safety ahead of profits.”
Kuria, a British woman whose father Joseph died in the same crash, said the deal was best described as “an atrocious abomination.”
“Miscarriage of justice is a gross understatement in describing this,” Kuria said, calling the agreement “a precedent for morally bankrupt companies” to escape accountability “without real reprimand.”
California’s Ike Riffel, on behalf of his deceased sons Melvin and Bennett, also criticized the deal for leaving Boeing’s “reckless and negligent behavior in the dark.”
“Without full transparency and accountability nothing will change. I would hope that we could learn from these terrible tragedies. But instead, the DOJ hands Boeing another sweetheart deal,” Riffel said. “With this deal, there will be no investigation, there will be no expert witness testimony, there will be no perpetrators of these crimes to answer the charges in court.”
While Boeing has reportedly not commented beyond confirming an “agreement in principle,” the DOJ reportedly defended the deal as “historic.”
“This resolution protects the American public. Boeing will be required to make historic investments to strengthen and integrate its compliance and safety programs,” the DOJ said, according to CNN. “This criminal conviction demonstrates the department’s commitment to holding Boeing accountable for its misconduct.”
Kreindler & Kreindler LLP partner Erin Applebaum, who is objecting to the deal alongside Cassell and whose firm represents 34 families for victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash, responded that the agreement is “wholly inadequate” and a “slap on the wrist.”
“We are extremely disappointed that DOJ is moving forward with this wholly inadequate plea deal despite the families’ strong opposition to its terms. The deal is nothing more than a slap on the wrist and will not effectuate meaningful change within the company,” Applebaum told Law&Crime. “The families want nothing more than to improve the safety culture at Boeing so that nobody else has to experience the hell they’ve endured for the past five years.”
The attorney also called the agreement “impotent” and cowardly on the part of the DOJ.
“But above all, we are especially dismayed by the cowardice displayed by the Justice Department in its continued refusal to acknowledge that Boeing’s criminal conspiracy resulted the brutal deaths of 346 people. It is truly a shame,” Applebaum added.
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