Jury orders Boeing to pay $49.5 million to family of 737 MAX crash victim

Samya Stumo in an undated handout photo provided by the Stumo family. Stumo was killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019. Stumo Family/via hide caption toggle caption Stumo Family/via A federal jury in Chicago awarded $49.5 million Wednesday to the family of a young woman who was killed when a Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed in Ethiopia in 2019. The verdict resolves one of the last remaining cases stemming from two deadly crashes that killed a total of 346 people and happened within months of each other. Samya Stumo was 24 years old when she died in the second 737 MAX crash. "Our daughter got on the plane completely trusting," her mother, Nadia Milleron, told NPR in 2019 . "She was going on her first assignment in East Africa for an NGO which works on healthcare. And she never dreamed that there would be any problem with the plane itself, and there was a huge problem." Boeing had already admitted responsibility for the crash, so the trial was only about how much the company should pay in compensatory damages. Boeing reached an agreement with the Justice Department to avoid criminal prosecution. The company also agreed to confidential settlements in dozens of lawsuits brought by family members of the crash victims. But a few cases have gone to trial. Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the Boeing 737 MAX crash in 2019, speaks during a memorial protest in front of Boeing's offices in Arlington, Virginia in 2023. …