US appeals court denies bid from families of Boeing 737 Max crash victims to reopen criminal case

In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it disagreed with the families' claims that federal prosecutors had violated their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and therefore could not revive the case.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling “badly flawed.”

“The victims’ families were never given a meaningful opportunity to shape the negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing, dating back to 2020,” Cassell said in a statement.

The aircraft manufacturer declined to comment, but at a hearing last month in New Orleans before the appellate court, Boeing attorney Paul Clement said more than 60 other families “affirmatively supported” the deal and dozens more did not oppose it.

“Boeing deeply regrets” the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and “has taken extraordinary steps to improve its internal processes and has paid substantial compensation” to the victims’ families.

The deal allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.

At the same hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the government has, for years, "solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims’ families as it’s decided whether and how to prosecute the Boeing Company.”

All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 — a Lion Air flight that plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into a field shortly after takeoff.

Catherine Berthet, whose daughter Camille Geoffroy was among the 157 killed in the second crash, said she is “sad and outraged” by the court’s decision. The ruling, she said in a statement, highlights the criminal justice system’s “inability to see where the public’s and passengers’ best interests truly lie.”

The case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the government but agreed not to prosecute if the company paid a settlement and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws.

Federal prosecutors later determined in 2024 that Boeing had violated that agreement, and the company agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, who oversaw the case for years, rejected the plea deal and directed the two sides to resume negotiations.

The Justice Department returned last May with the new deal and a request to withdraw the criminal charge altogether, which O'Connor approved in November. Prosecutors argued that going to trial carried the risk that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely.

In dismissing the case, O'Connor said prosecutors hadn’t acted in bad faith and had explained their decision and met their obligations under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

O'Connor also said that case law prevented him from blocking the dismissal simply because he disagreed with the government’s view that the new deal with Boeing served the public interest.

The case centered around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max, which airlines began flying in 2017. Boeing billed it as an update to its 737 family that wouldn’t require much additional pilot training.

But the Max did include significant changes — most notably, the addition of an automated flight-control system designed to help account for the plane’s larger engines. Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified it for flight.

In both of the fatal crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and the pilots were unable to regain control.

“One can only hope that another Boeing crash won’t be the outcome of this badly flawed ruling,” Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.