Jury Awards $50 Million to Family of Woman Killed in Boeing Crash

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.”

TRANSCRIPT

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.

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 the scrutiny that a trial brings. So, that issue of whether they were responsible or not was no longer in dispute, and that admission actually protected them from us finding out who was responsible in the company and what was wrong with the plane. So, we still want to know those answers. And we have options to pursue punitive damages against the CEOs and also the component parts manufacturers.

So, this trial that we just had was not about accountability. It was just about money. Our family was on trial. And we were asked about the time we spent with our daughter, our relationships with her, and it was just devastating for us. So, we’re grateful for the jury verdict as some kind of recognition of the laws, but we — of course, we want our daughter back. That’s what we really want. But, you know, as we can’t have that, we just want no one else to die on a new plane. So, right after the jury verdict, Boeing filed a motion to set aside the verdict. So, they said that it was our right to go to trial, and they said they admitted guilt, but then they immediately tried to roll it back. So, you know, this idea that they can just pay money and then continue on, you know, 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.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you — could you tell us what, as far as you understand, the subsequent investigations after these crashes revealed about Boeing’s responsibility, and why they are so eager not to have the discovery of actually who was directly involved or who’s responsible within the company?

NADIA MILLERON: Well, because, obviously, people made decisions after the Indonesian crash. So, in October of 2018, four-and-a-half months before our daughter died, Samya died, in Ethiopia, the same plane crashed for the same reasons, the malfunction of MCAS. But we don’t really know why, who made those decisions to continue flying the plane after that. Right? 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 with that. But so far, we’ve been unable to figure out who made the decisions and what actually was wrong with the plane.

And, you know, that’s all we want, is for our loved ones to not have died in vain, for their deaths to actually serve the well-being of future passengers and crew on new planes, which are flying today. We would like for all of this to be revealed and accountable, so that people can make the decisions about what planes they want to fly on, and also so that it doesn’t happen again within Boeing.

AMY GOODMAN: Nadia Milleron, your case is one case — it is horrifying — of over 300. All the passengers on the Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines flight died in those two crashes. Explain — yours is an individual case. Explain — is there a class action? And what kind of awards have other people gotten? Yours is one of the last ones — right? — that has taken place. And why it took place in Chicago?

NADIA MILLERON: Yeah, so, there has only been one jury verdict before ours, and I believe that it was $26 million awarded to that family. See, many countries — many people are coming from countries that have a limit, like the U.K., Canada. They have a limit on how much you can recover in a wrongful death suit. So, I think Canada is $200,000, and I think the U.K. is $150,000. And so, those people, those families chose to make settlement deals with Boeing. But we’re from the United States, so we didn’t have those kind of constraints, so we were able to go forward and do a trial.

The only thing we couldn’t do anything about is Boeing doing this shielding mechanism, where they said, “Yes, we are responsible, but we’re not going to tell you how.” And because we don’t go to court to do discovery and depositions and everything on that issue of their responsibility, that’s why we are still interested in pursuing punitive damages directly against the CEOs and the component parts manufacturers, because only through a punitive damages trial would we really be able to find out the answers to these questions. A lot of other people, as I said, had to settle. There are two more cases pending. And, you know, I am worried that even as a result of all this litigation, the only litigation that I really know about is the 157 people that died in Ethiopia. But even after all this litigation, we still won’t have any accountability, and then we still won’t be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you tell us something about your daughter, Samya, and how you want her to be remembered?

NADIA MILLERON: Yeah, Samya was all about accountability. Samya was a happy warrior. She was six feet tall and wore four-inch heels. And she loved, you know, beautiful clothes and being — and being out there making sure that people worldwide got healthcare. And so, she was going to Uganda to look at the Gates Foundation money and see, per capita, was that really helping people to get their own healthcare?

And so, here in the United States, we’re desperate to have healthcare, right? We have to start voting for independents and people outside the two-party system who stand up for what people actually need, because I saw Boeing get exactly what they want from Democratic leadership in a matter of days or weeks, exemptions from safety regulations. And then we’re told we have to wait years to get insurance companies out of our healthcare decisions. So, you know, that is something that I am doing in my daughter’s memory. She noticed an amazing Muslim woman attorney running for this office, that I’m running for today, in District 1 in Massachusetts, and she called me from Denmark and said, “Mom, you’ve got to look up this woman, and you’ve got to vote for her. She’s amazing.” And, you know, Samya gave me that push in 2018, when she was still alive, saying, “You know, you need to vote. You need to look at this. You need to move on Richard Neal, who’s been in office way too long and who is not standing up for our basic needs, even as a Democrat.”

And so, what I’ve discovered is that a small group of independents can withhold their vote from leadership, can be elected, can withhold their vote from leadership in the Congress, and can force, for example, Medicare for All for a vote. And in 2024, I got 133,000 votes. So, that was a much bigger turnout election. Now we have a smaller turnout election, and if I get those same human beings to come out and vote for me, then I will be the first woman independent ever elected to the Congress, and that is definitely in memory of my daughter. I don’t think I could do it without her force and support and her happy energy that she believed these changes could happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Nadia Milleron, we thank you so much for being with us, now an aviation safety advocate, because her daughter, Samya Rose Stumo, was killed along with 156 others when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX, crashed in 2019, this after another 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia. Now Nadia Milleron is running for Congress in the 1st District of Massachusetts as an independent, speaking to us from Sheffield, Mass.

Coming up, we go to Bolivia, where thousands of people have been protesting for a month on the streets of La Paz and other cities to demand the resignation of the president. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Fascists in Our Midst” by Montreal musician Paul Cargnello.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.