A federal jury in Chicago has awarded USD49.5 million to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old Massachusetts woman killed in the March 2019 crash of a B737-8 MAX operated by Ethiopian Airlines, one of two fatal disasters that led to the nearly two-year worldwide grounding of the aircraft type.
The verdict, delivered on May 13 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, included USD21 million for Stumo’s pain and suffering, according to a copy of the verdict shared with The Seattle Times.
The trial, which began on May 4, centred on the death of Stumo, a passenger aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa International to Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people on board. The disaster came less than five months after Lion Air Flight 610, another B737-8, crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia, killing 189 people.
According to The Seattle Times, the verdict resolves one of the last remaining lawsuits brought against Boeing by families of victims of the crashes and marks only the second civil trial Boeing has faced over the crashes. In the first case that went to trial in November 2025, a jury awarded the family of Shikha Garg more than USD28 million in damages. Another case was set to go to trial in January 2026, but the parties settled shortly after jury selection.
In their 2019 complaint, Stumo’s parents, Michael Stumo and Nadia Milleron, alleged Boeing rushed the B737 MAX to market to compete with Airbus's A320neo and concealed flaws in the aircraft’s Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight-control system implicated in both crashes. The suit claimed Boeing failed to adequately inform pilots about MCAS, downplayed the need for simulator training, and relied on a single angle-of-attack sensor vulnerable to malfunction.
The complaint also alleged Boeing failed to act urgently after the Lion Air crash, despite warnings about repeated nose-down commands linked to MCAS.
Boeing has reached confidential settlements with dozens of victims’ families and agreed with the US Department of Justice to avoid criminal prosecution related to the crashes.
