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A jury in Chicago has ordered Boeing to pay nearly $50 million to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old who was one of a total of 346 people killed in a pair of Boeing 737 MAX jet crashes less than a decade ago. Stumo died aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019, just months after another 737 MAX jet, a recently introduced model at the time, crashed in Indonesia. “They knew that there was a malfunction with the plane. The plane crashed in Indonesia, and then somebody inside the company decided to keep flying the plane and did not fix whatever it is that was wrong,” says Stumo’s mother, Nadia Milleron.

Milleron adds that while her family welcomes the latest settlement, she plans to continue pursuing legal action and serious scrutiny of Boeing’s safety practices. “This trial that we just had was not about accountability,” she explains. “This idea that they can just pay money and then continue on with the same behavior, that’s what we object to, and that’s why we want to expose what they’re actually doing in the company that could have caused these crashes.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman in New York. Juan González joins us in Chicago, where a jury has ordered Boeing to pay nearly $50 million to the family of Samya Stumo, which had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Boeing. Samya was killed in 2019 aboard a Boeing 737 MAX jet in Ethiopia. The crash came months after another Boeing 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia. Together, the crashes killed all 346 people on board. This is one of the last verdicts in a series of wrongful death suits stemming from the two deadly crashes.

Subsequent investigations and whistleblower testimony revealed serious problems with the safety culture at Boeing. Last year, the Trump administration decided to drop a criminal prosecution against Boeing over the fatal crashes. The judge who approved the request said he didn’t have authority to reject the government’s decision. In 2023, Judge Reed O’Connor had said, quote, “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history,” unquote.

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The mother of Samya Stumo, Nadia Milleron, joins us now from Massachusetts, where she’s running for Congress for a second time as an independent there. Samya Stumo was the grandniece of Ralph Nader.

Nadia Milleron, thanks so much for being with us. Explain what this almost $50 million jury verdict was in your daughter Samya’s case.

NADIA MILLERON: Well, thank you, Amy. Thank you for having us on so that we can explain.

Boeing accepted responsibility for the crashes, killing preventable deaths of 346 people, in which they could have made different decisions, and then those people would still be alive and have been able to fly on a new plane. These were new, brand-new planes. So, they accepted that responsibility, and by doing that, they avoided........

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