BY YANET FANTAYE WOGAYEHU – Lawyers representing families of victims of the 2019 Ethiopian Airline’s Boeing 737 Max plane crash are pushing for more compensation as they dispute a new agreement between the US Department of Justice and Boeing.
On July 24, 2024, the American Plane maker finalized an agreement to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and to pay fines ranging between $243.6 million and $487 million. The fines are a fraction of $24.8 billion in compensation that families of the crash victims had initially requested.
US law firm, Ribbeck Law Chartered in a plea submission to a US District Court has disputed the agreement, arguing the compensation amount as too little.
Instead, the law firm is pushing for a much higher compensation amount of between $47 billion to $58 billion they say is more in line with previous criminal fraud cases involving corporate firms and where larger fines amounting to billions of dollars were charged-even when they did not involve deaths.
Ribbeck is urging the Court to dismiss the proposed plea suggesting that Boeing should be required to pay a substantial fine which recognizes the value of each of the 346 people killed, the significant harm to others and pay a fine which is consistent with fines paid by other corporate criminal defendants who have engaged in extreme criminal conduct.
“RLC, on behalf of its clients, vehemently objects to the proposed plea agreement entered into by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Boeing concerning the recent criminal fraud charges. The proposed fine is grossly inadequate and fails to meet the standards set by prior precedents in penalizing corporations for similar egregious conduct,” said Manuel von Ribbeck, Founding Partner at Ribbeck Law Chartered.
Among the precedences cited by the law firm are several banks that were required to pay billions of dollars because of financial fraud, including a $ 25 billion settlement in 2012 involving JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and GMAC. A $16 billion settlement was also paid by Bank of America in 2014.
In another instance, the lawyers cited a fraud case involving Boeing, in which the plane maker obtained insider information from a United States Government official which it then used to obtain a government contract worth billions (in exchange for Boeing employing the official’s family and later the official, Boeing paid $615,000,000 in a civil settlement and $50,000,000.00 for potentially criminal conduct.
The severity of Boeing’s actions, which resulted in the tragic loss of 346 lives in the 737 MAX crashes, the lawyers said, necessitates a far more substantial financial penalty.
“Historically, fines for corporate criminal fraud have been in the billions, reflecting the gravity of such offences and serving as a deterrent to other corporations. In stark contrast, the proposed fine for Boeing is a mere fraction of these amounts, failing to reflect the catastrophic consequences of their actions and undermining public trust in the justice system,” Mr Ribbeck added.
An Ethiopian Airlines jet headed to Nairobi from Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport in Ethiopia crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 149 on board including 9 Ethiopians amongst 35 other nationalities. The additional fines may see families of the victims get additional compensation from Boeing possibly in billions of dollars.
Another plane of the same model was involved in a crash less than five months earlier, when a Lion Air flight crashed into the sea near Indonesia with 189 people on board.
Ribbeck argued that the DOJ’s recommendation does not align with the scale of the wrongdoing and sets a dangerous precedent that large corporations can evade appropriate punishment for criminal activities that jeopardize public safety and trust.
“Boeing’s actions were not just regulatory missteps; they were deliberate and deceitful measures to prioritize profit over human lives. Such conduct demands the highest levels of accountability and a penalty that truly reflects the magnitude of the crime,” he said.
The lawyers argue that only through such measures can justice be served and a clear message sent that corporate misconduct of this magnitude will not be tolerated in future.
