Boeing 737 Max fraud case agreement to remain intact, federal judge in Fort Worth orders

Fifteen months before a deferred prosecution agreement is to expire, a U.S. District Court judge in Fort Worth on Thursday denied a motion filed by relatives of victims of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashes that requested the court assess and perhaps nullify the agreement’s terms.

Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in an order that the court lacked the judicial authority to alter the agreement between federal prosecutors and Boeing. The agreement was reached after investigations determined that the company’s mishandling of information about an aircraft part and the substandard pilot training that resulted led to Boeing 737 Max crashes in October 2018 and March 2019.

On Lion Air Flight 610, all 189 passengers and crew members died when it crashed shortly after taking off from Indonesia. On Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, 157 passengers and crew members died when it crashed shortly after taking off from Ethiopia.

The agreement imposes on Boeing a criminal penalty fine of about $2.5 billion and payments to its 737 MAX airline customers and to a crash-victim beneficiaries fund.

“This Court has immense sympathy for the victims and loved ones of those who died in the tragic plane crashes resulting from Boeing’s criminal conspiracy,” O’Connor wrote. “Had Congress vested this Court with sweeping authority to ensure that justice is done in a case like this one, it would not hesitate.”

The law does not allow for a remedy, O’Connor concluded in the order.

“And no measure of sympathy nor desire for justice to be done would legitimize this Court’s exceeding the lawful scope of its judicial authority,” O’Connor wrote.

The three-year agreement was reached in January 2021, when the U.S. Department of Justice charged Boeing with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. The agreement calls for prosecutors to seek the dismissal of the charge if they determine the company has complied with the agreement’s provisions.

The matter was filed in the Northern District of Texas because the fraud occurred at least in part in the district.

Thirteen people who are relatives of the crash victims criticized the deferred prosecution agreement at an initial appearance and arraignment hearing in Fort Worth on Jan. 26.

The families challenged elements of the agreement and in the motion that O’Connor denied, sought an order rejecting it or modifying it by rescinding the agreement’s immunity provision. The victim representatives have asserted that the agreement violates the Crime Victims Rights Act because prosecutors did not confer with victims’ relatives before entering into it.

At the arraignment, Paul Kiernan, whose partner Joanna Toole died in the Flight 302 crash, was among the relatives of victims who suggested that their family members were the human cost in Boeing’s calculation that passenger safety was inferior to its other interests.

Boeing previously admitted that two of its 737 MAX flight technical pilots deceived the Federal Aviation Administration’s aircraft evaluation group about an important aircraft part known as MCAS that affected the flight control system of the Boeing 737 MAX. Because of the deception, a key document published by the FAA lacked information about the part, and in turn, airplane manuals and pilot-training materials for U.S.-based airlines lacked information about it, the U.S. Department of Justice has said.

In November 2016, two of Boeing’s 737 MAX flight technical pilots discovered information about an important change to the control system part. Rather than sharing information about the change with the FAA, Boeing concealed the information and deceived the FAA about the part.