By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday said it opposes a legal bid by families of victims of the two 737 MAX crashes asking a judge to publicly declare the government violated their rights when it struck a plea deal with Boeing in January 2021.
The Justice Department said in a court filing it opposed the request but “nevertheless, the government apologizes for not meeting and conferring with these crash victims’ beneficiaries before entering into” the Boeing deferred prosecution agreement “even though it had no legal obligation to do so.”
Boeing declined to comment.
The Justice Department deal, struck during the Trump administration, capped a 21-month investigation into the design and development of the 737 MAX following the two crashes, in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people.
The Justice Department explained its decision not to prosecute Boeing.
“There was no doubt that Boeing had conspired to defraud the federal government when it deceived the FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group,” the filing said.
“The government’s investigation, however, did not produce evidence that it believed would allow it to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what factors had caused the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 26 met with family members of some of the victims. The Justice Department said Tuesday that it was working to revise its
internal policies and guidelines to “ensure that if this situation arises in the future, consultation and notice will occur.”
The $2.5 billion settlement allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution, and included a fine of $243.6 million, compensation to airlines of $1.77 billion and a $500 million fund for crash victims over fraud conspiracy charges related to the plane’s flawed design.
The Justice Department said on Tuesday that $471 million — 94% of the $500 million — had been disbursed to relatives of 326 of the 346 crash victims.
In October, a former chief technical pilot for Boeing was charged with fraud for deceiving federal regulators evaluating the company’s 737 MAX jet. He has denied wrongdoing.
The $243 million fine, which the Justice Department said was at the “low end” of the sentencing guidelines, represented the amount Boeing saved by not implementing full-flight simulator training.
The crashes, which cost Boeing some $20 billion and led to a 20-month grounding of the plane which was lifted in late 2020, prompted Congress to pass legislation reforming new airplane certification.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Mark Porter and Jason Neely)
