A United States court has awarded over $24 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a United Nations consultant who died in the 2019 crash of a Boeing 737 Max in Ethiopia.
The verdict, delivered Wednesday in Chicago after a weeklong trial, marks the first civil case arising from the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 disaster, which claimed the lives of all 157 passengers and crew.
“We and the family are gratified by the jury’s verdict. It provides public accountability for Boeing’s wrongful conduct,” the family’s team of lawyers, Shanin Specter and Elizabeth Crawford, said in a statement after the verdict was read in court.
Boeing will also pay $3.4 million to Garg’s husband, Soumya Bhattacharya, under an out-of-court agreement, bringing the total compensation to the family to $35.8 million.
The company has reached pre-trial settlements in most of the dozens of wrongful-death lawsuits filed following the crash, though the terms of those agreements were confidential. Fewer than a dozen cases are still pending, according to lawyers.
Jurors were not asked to determine Boeing’s liability, as the company had already accepted responsibility for the crash and for a similar 737 Max disaster five months earlier near Indonesia.
Their role was to decide on damages, including compensation for loss of income and the emotional suffering experienced by Garg’s husband and parents.
Garg, a United Nations Development Programme consultant, was traveling to a UN environmental assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, like many of the other passengers.
The Boeing 737 Max, then newly introduced, crashed just minutes after departing from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport.

