Boeing settles with Canadian man whose family died in a 737 Max crash in Ethiopia

Paul Njoroge testifies during a House Transportation subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 17, 2019, on aviation safety. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

CHICAGO — Boeing reached a settlement Friday with a Canadian man whose wife and three children were killed in a deadly 2019 crash in Ethiopia, averting the first trial connected to a devastating event that led to a worldwide grounding of Max jets.

The jury trial at Chicago’s federal court had been set to start Monday to determine damages for Paul Njoroge of Canada. His family was heading to their native Kenya in March 2019 aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 when it malfunctioned and plummeted to the ground. The wreck killed all 157 people on board.

Njoroge, 41, had planned to testify about how the crash affected his life. He has been unable to return to his family home in Toronto because the memories are too painful. He hasn’t been able to find a job. And he has weathered criticism from relatives for not traveling alongside his wife and children.

“He’s got complicated grief and sorrow and his own emotional stress,” said Njoroge’s attorney, Robert Clifford. “He’s haunted by nightmares and the loss of his wife and children.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed publicly.

Clifford said his client intended to seek “millions” in damages on behalf of his wife and children, but declined to publicly specify an amount ahead of the trial.

“The aviation team at Clifford Law Offices has been working round-the-clock in preparation for trial, but the mediator was able to help the parties come to an agreement,” Clifford said in a statement Friday.

A Boeing spokesperson said via email Friday that the company had no comment.

The proceedings were not expected to delve into technicalities involving the Max version of Boeing’s bestselling 737 airplane, which has been the source of persistent troubles for the company since the Ethiopia crash and one the year before in Indonesia. A combined 346 people, including passengers and crew members, died in those crashes.

In 2021, Chicago-based Boeing accepted responsibility for the Ethiopia crash in a deal with the victims’ families that allowed them to pursue individual claims in U.S. courts instead of their home countries. Citizens of 35 countries were killed. Several families of victims have already settled. Terms of those agreements also were not made public.

The jetliner heading to Nairobi lost control shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport and nose-dived into a barren patch of land.

Investigators determined the Ethiopia and Indonesia crashes were caused by a system that relied on a sensor that provided faulty readings and pushed the plane noses down, leaving pilots unable to regain control. After the Ethiopia crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned the system.

This year, Boeing reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid criminal prosecutions in both crashes.

Among those killed were Njoroge’s wife, Carolyne, and three small children, Ryan, age 6, Kellie, 4, and Rubi, 9 months old, the youngest to die on the plane. Njoroge also lost his mother-in-law, whose family has a separate case.

Njoroge, who met his wife in college in Nairobi, was living in Canada at the time of the crash. He had planned to join his family in Kenya later.

He testified before Congress in 2019 about repeatedly imagining how his family suffered during the flight, which lasted only six minutes. He has pictured his wife struggling to hold their infant in her lap with two other children seated nearby.

“I stay up nights thinking of the horror that they must have endured,” Njoroge said. “The six minutes will forever be embedded in my mind. I was not there to help them. I couldn’t save them.”

By Sophia Tareen.