Judge gives Boeing 45 days to file on crash-suits move

Boeing wants a change of venue for litigation of cases stemming from the October crash of one of its 737 Max planes, like this one shown being assembled last month in Renton, Wash.
Boeing wants a change of venue for litigation of cases stemming from the October crash of one of its 737 Max planes, like this one shown being assembled last month in Renton, Wash.

Faced with lawsuits over a plane crash half a world away, Boeing is arguing that it shouldn't have to defend itself in a courtroom a short walk from its corporate headquarters.

The world's largest plane-maker has indicated in court filings that it's likely to request that cases stemming from the October crash of a 737 Max plane be moved from the federal courthouse in Chicago to Indonesia, where the plane went down and where most of the victims lived.

On Tuesday, a federal judge told the company it must make the request within 45 days, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. They say Boeing would skirt responsibility and lessen its financial liability if it were able to shift the U.S. cases 10,000 miles away.

"They don't want them to have justice," said Steven Hart, a Chicago lawyer representing some of the families of victims from the Lion Air flight that crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people aboard.

Boeing said there's precedent for such a case to be heard in the country where the incident took place.

"The disputes relating to the Lion Air Flight JT 610 accident should be heard and resolved by the courts of the nation with the greatest interest in the matter," the company said when it disclosed its plan in a legal filing late last year. "That means the Indonesian courts, just as other cases arising out of Indonesian aviation accidents have been resolved by the Indonesian courts."

One of the lawyers representing Boeing, Bates McIntyre Larson, said she could not comment on pending litigation.

Another lawyer involved in the cases, Brian Kabateck, said it makes no sense to move the litigation to Indonesia because the 737 Max was designed, manufactured and sold in the U.S. The Indonesian judicial system doesn't have the same protections the U.S. system offers, such as jury trials or punitive-damage awards, he said.

"This is not like other airline crashes," Kabateck said. "I've never had a case in which everything related to the aircraft happened here. So why shouldn't Boeing be held accountable where they designed and sold the plane?"

"Our justice system is based on the free flow of information -- depositions, pretrial discovery and due process on both sides," he added. "All these issues either don't exist in Indonesia or are murky."

Lawyers for the families of Lion Air victims said in an April 24 filing that Boeing should be forced as soon as possible to decide whether to make a formal request to move the cases, allowing the litigation to proceed. Boeing lawyers made their intentions about moving the cases known in a filing that seeks to place the Chicago litigation on hold.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said they have a strong argument to keep the cases in the U.S. because there's an indication the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration contributed to the accidents by giving Boeing the right to certify its own product.

The issue is particularly important given that a second crash involving a 737 Max killed 157 people in Ethiopia on March 10. Kabateck said new evidence is emerging about the aircraft's flight worthiness, including information from whistleblowers that problems were identified before the crashes and that Boeing failed to correct them.

In the company's first-quarter earnings call last week, CEO Dennis Muilenburg didn't admit Boeing made any mistakes but acknowledged it hadn't done enough. Referring to efforts to address the problems raised by the two crashes, he said: "We own it."

Boeing is assigning its top lawyer to a new position in which he will handle legal issues stemming from the two crashes.

The company said Wednesday that general counsel and Executive Vice President J. Michael Luttig was named counselor and senior adviser to Muilenburg and the board.

Luttig, 64, is a former prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney general who was named to a federal appeals court in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush. He joined Boeing in 2006.

Boeing named Brett Gerry its new general counsel.

Information for this article was contributed by Janan Hanna of Bloomberg News and by staff members of The Associated Press.

Business on 05/02/2019

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