SEATTLE — The families of four victims in the 2018 Lion Air plane crash that killed 189 people have reached a settlement with Boeing, Seattle’s Herrmann Law Group said.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed into the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta on Oct. 29, 2018. Four months later, another Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed on a flight from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia under similar circumstances. As a result, the aircraft was grounded worldwide.
Herrmann Law, which has an office in Seattle’s International District, represents 46 of the victim families in the Lion Air crash. Negotiations with Boeing on the pending cases are ongoing. The firm also represents four victims in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
Charles Herrmann, owner of Herrmann Law said, “The only way corporations learn a lesson, is when victim families receive large payments from lawsuits.”
Attorney Mark Lindquist has been working with Herrmann on the case. He said, “Our goals are justice for our clients, accountability for Boeing, and safer skies for everyone.”
The settlements were announced late last month, just before the one-year anniversary of the crash, and as the Indonesian government issued a final report on the accident. The findings were highly critical of Boeing.
“The final report essentially confirms that Boeing’s actions moved from simple negligence in the first place to intentional misconduct as they tried to conceal their errors,” said Herrmann. “Boeing hid the MCAS (computer program) from the airlines and the pilots by removing notice and instruction on the MCAS from the manuals and even hid from the FAA the quadrupling of its power. Without proper training, the pilots didn’t know how to react. It was as though they were fighting a ghost.”
Investigators were also critical of the Federal Aviation Administration for serious failures in safety oversight.