DOJ to present Boeing with plea deal that families of 2018, 2019 crash victims say falls short: Lawyers

DOJ to present Boeing with plea deal that families of 2018, 2019 crash victims say falls short: Lawyers

Families of victims of the fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes were briefed Sunday.

ByJames Hill, Clara McMichael, and Alexander Mallin

June 30, 2024, 6:32 PM

The Department of Justice is preparing to present the Boeing Company a plea deal that would again allow the aerospace giant to avoid a trial over an alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to attorneys for families of victims of two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes who were briefed on the department's plans Sunday afternoon.

Under the proposed deal, Boeing would be required to enter a guilty plea to the conspiracy charge, which was first filed January 2021, for allegedly misleading the FAA during its evaluation of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft. The company must also agree to the appointment of an external corporate monitor, pay a fine of about $200 million and remain on probation for three years, according to lawyers for the families.

During the briefing with the DOJ, family members of the crash victims expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal, according to attorneys representing the families. The families contend that the deal contains no accountability and no admission that Boeing's alleged conspiracy caused the deaths of 346 people who were killed in the two Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. The victims' families have been pushing DOJ to take the company to trial and to impose fines upwards of $20 billion.

"The Justice Department is preparing to offer to Boeing another sweetheart plea deal," wrote attorneys Robert Clifford and Paul Cassell in a statement. "The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing's crime killed 346 people. It also appears to rest on the idea that Boeing did not harm any victim. The families will strenuously object to this plea deal. Judge [Reed] O'Connor [of the Northern District of Texas] will have to decide whether this no-accountability-deal is in the public interest. Indeed, he will have to decide whether to approve [an agreement] that ties his hands at sentencing and prevents him from imposing any additional punishment or remedial measures. The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this."

A seal for the Department of Justice is seen on a podium ahead of a news conference with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice Building on March 21, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

According to the statement from Clifford and Cassell, "Glenn Leon, Chief of the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. DOJ, told the group on the call that the DOJ hasn't shared the new plea agreement with Boeing but would do so later Sunday. [Leon] admitted there is 'a strong interest' by the families to go to trial, but he repeatedly said that the DOJ couldn't prove charges by a reasonable doubt. Families argued over and over for a trial and to allow a jury to make that decision," the statement said.

Mark Lindquist, another attorney for crash victims' families, told ABC News that Boeing will be given until the July 7 to accept the deal. If Boeing rejects the terms, the DOJ will pursue prosecution.

"The company would be absolutely brutalized in a highly public trial," Lindquist said. "Boeing has way too much dirty laundry to risk the bright spotlight of a trial."

The Department of Justice and Boeing declined to comment.

Clifford and Cassell told the DOJ that the victims' families "will be traveling from around the world to go to the next hearing before Judge O'Connor in Texas "to fight this,'' according to the attorneys' statement.

The deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) was put into place in the final days of the Trump administration, when the DOJ charged Boeing in a criminal information with one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for allegedly misleading the FAA during the agency's evaluation of the new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. Over 300 people died in the two MAX crashes -- the first in Indonesia in October 2018 and the second five months later in Ethiopia.

Under the terms of that agreement, the DOJ fined Boeing $243.7 million and required the company to pay $1.77 billion in compensation to its airline customers and $500 million to the victims' beneficiaries. The company was also required to disclose any allegations of fraud, cooperate with the government and avoid committing any felony offense. Under these conditions, the DOJ agreed to defer criminal prosecution for three years.

"I firmly believe that entering into this resolution is the right thing for us to do -- a step that appropriately acknowledges how we fell short of our values and expectations," David Calhoun, Boeing president and CEO, said in a note to employees after the company was charged by the DOJ in 2021. "This resolution is a serious reminder to all of us of how critical our obligation of transparency to regulators is, and the consequences that our company can face if any one of us falls short of those expectations."

But in May -- four months after the door plug fell off Alaska Airlines flight 1281 over Portland, Oregon -- the DOJ informed Boeing that the company had failed to live up to its obligations under the DPA.

The DOJ's determination once again opened Boeing up to possible prosecution on the original charge or "for any federal criminal violation of which the United States has knowledge," according to a DOJ letter sent last month to U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, who presides over the criminal case.

Boeing has disputed the DOJ's finding of a breach in the DPA.

"We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue," the company said in a statement in May.

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