A federal judge has rejected an effort by families of passengers who died in Boeing 737 MAX crashes to reopen an agreement that allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution for fraud in how it won regulatory approval for the plane.
District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth said that he has sympathy for the families of the 346 people who died in two MAX crashes, but that federal law doesn't give courts the power to oversee agreements that prosecutors make with defendants.
The court, O'Connor wrote in a decision dated Thursday, "has no occasion to address whether the (settlement) is in fact grossly incommensurate with Boeing's egregious criminal conduct."
The ruling appears to end an effort by family members of some passengers to nullify a January 2021 agreement that Boeing struck with the Justice Department. Boeing agreed to pay a $244 million fine as part of a $2.5 billion settlement in which the government agreed not to prosecute Boeing on a felony fraud charge for misleading U.S. regulators who approved the MAX.
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The hopes of the families were boosted when O'Connor ordered an unusual arraignment for Boeing. At the Jan. 26 hearing, Boeing pleaded not guilty to fraud, and more than a dozen family members gave emotional testimony about their grief and outrage at Boeing's actions. Some called for Boeing executives to be prosecuted.
Boeing was charged with misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about a key flight-control system on the MAX that was implicated in a 2018 crash in Indonesia and a 2019 crash in Ethiopia. Boeing cast blame on two former test pilots, but critics said the low-level employees were scapegoats for corporate wrongdoing.
Sales of the MAX stopped after the crashes and a worldwide grounding. Orders have rebounded more recently, however, and the 737 MAX is Boeing's best-selling plane. The company announced last month that it will open a fourth MAX assembly line late next year because of strong demand.
