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A United States court on Monday opened the latest civil trial linked to the fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, with the family of an Irish-born United Nations(UN) aid worker seeking to hold the aircraft manufacturer accountable.
The case centres on Michael “Mick” Ryan, an engineer with the UN World Food Programme, who was among the 157 people killed when an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa in March 2019.
Ryan had previously worked during the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and later supported Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. He was travelling to Kenya when the aircraft crashed just months after it had been delivered to Ethiopian Airlines.
The trial, one of the last remaining civil cases arising from the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that claimed 346 lives, will determine damages for Ryan’s surviving family.
According to a memorial published by the United Nations, Ryan spent his career supporting vulnerable communities in countries including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, where he led the construction of shelters and evacuation efforts that helped protect tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from floods and landslides.
The plaintiffs include his widow, Naoise Ryan, and their two children, Saorlaith and MacDara, who were three years old and six months old respectively at the time of the crash.
The Chicago trial is expected to last about 12 days, with members of Ryan’s family and former colleagues due to testify.
Ryan’s lawyer, Steven Marks, said the family chose to pursue a jury verdict rather than reach a settlement with Boeing, describing the case as an effort to secure accountability rather than compensation.
According to Marks, Naoise Ryan also declined Boeing’s voluntary compensation payment following the crash, reportedly describing it as “blood money”, and instead directed her allocation of about $1.65 million to an aviation safety foundation.
Boeing has apologised for the two 737 MAX crashes and acknowledged that the aircraft’s anti-stall software played a role in both disasters. The company has since settled most claims privately.
In May, a Chicago jury awarded $49.5 million in damages to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American public health worker who also died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash. During that trial, her family’s lawyers argued that Boeing’s negligence contributed to the disaster.
