Boeing victims ask judge to overturn ‘unfair’ sweetheart deal

Families of 737 MAX victims are objecting to the plea deal between Boeing and the Justice Department, which they say “is based on misleading and offensive premises.”

Boeing reached an agreement with the Justice Department on Sunday night to avoid going to trial in its ongoing criminal fraud case.

Boeing is accused of misleading Federal Aviation Administration regulators into approving its 737 MAX plane, the plane involved in crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

If the decision is approved by a federal judge, Boeing will plead guilty to one count of fraud, pay a $243.6 million fine, undergo three years of safety compliance monitoring and invest at least $455 million over the next three years to improve its safety and compliance initiatives.

The plea agreement also requires the company’s board of directors to meet with the families of those killed in the two crashes.

The victims’ families immediately filed a notice with the Fort Worth District Court for the Northern District of Texas, signaling their intention to oppose the proposed plea.

The opinion, shared with Newsweek by the victims’ attorneys, underscores their opposition to the “generous plea deal.”

“The families intend to argue that the Boeing plea agreement unfairly gives Boeing concessions that other defendants would never receive and fails to hold Boeing accountable for the deaths of 346 people,” the notice reads.

At an upcoming hearing, the date of which has not yet been announced, the families will ask the judge to reject the “generous plea agreement,” which they say “is based on misleading and offensive premises.”

The families have asked the court to postpone setting a hearing date until at least July 12.^thgiving them time to organise a briefing explaining why the deal should be rejected.

Paul Cassell, the families’ attorney and a criminal law professor at the University of Utah, spoke to Newsweek about the next steps in the case against Boeing.

“A judge can reject a plea that is not in the public interest, and this misleading and generous agreement is clearly not in the public interest,” Cassell said. “We plan to ask Judge O’Connor to use his recognized authority to reject this improper plea and simply set the case for a public trial, so that all of the facts surrounding the case can be presented in a fair and open forum before a jury.”

Cassell previously called the aerospace giant’s settlement with the DOJ a “sweetheart plea deal” and told Newsweek that the $243.6 million fine was “a pittance for Boeing.”

Erin Applebaum, another attorney for the victims’ families, said that avoiding a trial and imposing only “negligible” sanctions on the company “will do nothing to change the safety culture at Boeing.”

“When another Boeing crash inevitably occurs and the Justice Department seeks to assign responsibility, it will have no choice but to look in the mirror,” Applebaum added.

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