ALBAWABA - The Justice Department is being petitioned by the families of those who lost their loved ones in two deadly Boeing 737 Max accidents to punish the airline company with up to $24.8 billion in fines, according to AFP, and to pursue criminal charges.
The request was filed a day after Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun recognized the "gravity" of the firm's safety issues and promised a US congressional panel that it was achieving progress on the matter, with the families of those killed in the company's 2018 and 2019 Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes sitting behind him in the crowd while holding up photos of the victims.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing 15 of the victims’ families, said in a letter sent to the DOJ, according to Bloomberg, that that amount is “legally justified and clearly appropriate,” arguing that $14 billion to $22 billion of the overall sum might be avoided if Boeing uses the resources to strengthen its safety initiatives and hire an impartial corporate watchdog.
The families demanded in the letter that Boeing officials who were employed by the firm at the time of the two accidents be prosecuted by the DOJ. The families were previously informed by prosecutors that any attempt to prosecute individuals would probably be ineffective due to the five-year statute of limitations for filing criminal charges.
The complaint pertains to catastrophic incidents that occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, which together resulted in the loss of 346 lives. It comes at a time when Boeing is under increased scrutiny as a result of recent production and safety failures.
