Several cases against Boeing (BOE, Washington National) filed by a Canadian man who lost his parents and sister in the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 have been settled out of court for a confidential amount on the eve of a US jury trial on damages, according to a law firm involved in the cases.
The suits were brought by Manant Vaidya on behalf of the estates of his parents Pannagesh and Hansini Vaidya and his sister Kosha Vaidya. All 157 people on board were killed when the B737-8 crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa International on March 10, 2019. Also among the victims were Kosha Vaidya’s husband, Preritkumar Dixit, and their two children, Ashka and Anushka Dixit.
In a statement, Vaidya's lawyer, Robert Clifford of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, said Boeing settled the cases late on January 13, after a jury had been selected and just hours before opening statements were scheduled at the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, also in Chicago. The jury trial was to determine damages only, after Boeing had previously accepted responsibility for the crash.
"Boeing accepted full responsibility for the senseless and preventable loss of these innocent lives, and this corporate giant has now been held accountable to this family," Clifford said.
In a statement carried by The Canadian Press, Boeing spokesperson Shelley Spreier said the company was "deeply sorry" to those who lost loved ones. "We made an upfront commitment to fully and fairly compensate the families of those who were lost and have accepted legal responsibility for the accidents in these proceedings," she said.
The Ethiopian Airlines crash followed the October 2018 crash of Lion Air flight JT610, also involving a B737-8, leading to the worldwide temporary grounding of the type and intense scrutiny of Boeing's safety practices.
Boeing has settled more than 90% of the civil lawsuits stemming from the two accidents and has paid billions of dollars in compensation, the company told Reuters.
