A Chicago jury has awarded nearly $50 million to a family of a victim killed in the deadly 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash. The ruling centres on Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old nonprofit worker who died aboard the Nairobi-bound flight.
Jury Awards Damages for Suffering and Family Loss
Jurors awarded $21 million for Stumo’s suffering during the flight’s final moments, $16.5 million for her family’s loss of companionship and $12 million for grief damages. Boeing did not contest liability during the trial, despite punitive claims against the company and component manufacturers having previously been dismissed.
Stumo worked in the global health nonprofit sector under a company called ThinkWell and was travelling to Kenya for work at the time of the crash. In 2021, ThinkWell launched the Samya Rose Stumo Memorial Fellowship in her honour. Her family has continued pressing for broader accountability from Boeing, including efforts to revive punitive damage claims through an appeals court.
Crash Fallout continues to shadow Boeing
The Ethiopian Airlines disaster, coupled with an earlier Lion Air crash in Indonesia, killed a combined 346 people. Because of these incidents, all Boeing 737 MAXs were grounded worldwide. Since then, the company has paid billions through settlements, regulatory penalties and compensation agreements.
In November, another jury awarded over $28 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a UN environmental worker killed in the same 2019 crash.
Though Boeing had previously agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge tied to the crashes, the Justice Department later abandoned the deal in 2025, allowing the company to avoid prosecution. Boeing has said it respects families’ decisions to pursue claims through the courts, even as most lawsuits tied to the crashes have already been settled.
Samya’s father, Michael Stumo commented, “We’re traumatized. We don’t want to be doing this. But we want to avoid a third crash.”
