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A federal judge set an accelerated schedule Monday to consider objections from relatives of those killed in recent crashes aboard the Boeing 737 Max - after a proposed plea deal that would see the aerospace giant plead guilty to criminally defrauding the government, Reuters reports.
The objections could potentially complicate the settlement between Boeing and the Department of Justice, which the federal government disclosed in a court filing earlier this month.
“The judge has a lot of discretion here,” Paul Cassell, who represents 15 of the families involved in the case, told NPR earlier this month.
“The ultimate test is whether this is in the public interest, to have the charges essentially resolved in this way, and the victims, I think, have some very powerful reasons to suggest this isn’t a good deal.”
Under the settlement, which Boeing has agreed to in principle, the company would pay a $243.6m fine, spend $455m over the next three years to boost safety and compliance, accept an independent monitor of the company, and plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge, a felony.
Prosecutors have alleged the company defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration by knowingly making false representations about the software aboard the 737 Max, a flagship jet from Boeing that was grounded for 20 months after 346 people were killed in crashes between 2018 and 2019.
Families of those who died in the crashes have pushed for a public trial, which would see further scrutiny of company.
"When there is inevitably another Boeing crash and DOJ seeks to assign blame, they will have nowhere else to look but in the mirror," Erin Applebaum, a lawyer for some of the families, told Newsweek after the settlement proposal was announced.
Once one of the jewels of American manufacturing, Boeing has recently been tarnished by a series of fiascos including the stranding of its Starliner space craft at the International Space Station and a panel blowing off mid-air on an Alaska Air Boeing jet in January.
Boeing previously headed off potential charges over the 737 Max deaths in 2021 when it agreed to a more than $2.5bn settlement.
This May, however, the Department of Justice determined that the company had failed to “design, implement and enforce” a compliance and ethics program to detect and prevent violations of US fraud laws, opening the company back up to criminal liability.
The outcome of the Boeing case could impact the ability of the aerospace stalwart to qualify for lucrative government contracts.
The company was under heavy scrutiny last month in a hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which various family members of those who died in the 737 Max crashes attended.
“I flew from England to Washington DC to hear in person what the Boeing CEO has to say to the Senate and to the world about any safety improvements made at that corporation,” Zipporah Kuria, whose father died in a 2019 737 Max crash, told the BBC after the hearing.
“I also continue to press the US government to hold Boeing and its corporate executives criminally responsible for the deaths of 346 people. We will not rest until we see justice.”
