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Judge to hear objections from crash victims' families

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DOJ defends plea deal as fair and just

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Families call plea agreement a 'sweetheart' deal lacking

accountability

By Mike Spector

NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - A federal judge is set to

hold a hearing on Friday to consider objections from relatives

of people killed in two Boeing 737 MAX crashes to the U.S.

planemaker's agreement to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud

regulators.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, is

slated to hear arguments from Boeing ( BA ) and federal

prosecutors arguing he should accept the plea deal, and lawyers

for the relatives urging him to reject it. The judge may decide

on Friday whether to accept the plea deal or rule on it later.

The judge has fielded hundreds of pages of legal briefs from

the parties over the past several weeks. The families of the 346

people who perished in the plane crashes, which occurred in 2018

and 2019, contend the plea agreement is a "sweetheart" deal that

doesn't go far enough in holding Boeing ( BA ) or its executives

accountable for the deaths of their loved ones.

Boeing ( BA ) and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to

comment. The Justice Department has defended the agreement,

describing it in a court filing as "fair and just, as well as a

strong resolution of this matter that serves the public

interest."

Prosecutors arrived at the plea agreement after an extensive

investigation and a series of meetings with the families, they

said. "Yet in the end," the prosecutors said in an August court

filing, DOJ officials have "not found the one thing that

underlies the families' most passionate objections to the

proposed resolution: evidence that could prove beyond a

reasonable doubt that Boeing's ( BA ) fraud caused the deaths of their

loved ones."

Boeing ( BA ) "profoundly regrets the accidents and the unspeakable

losses" the families suffered, the company said in its own

August court filing. Boeing ( BA ) is "prepared to plead guilty and

thereby accept ultimate responsibility for the crime" of

conspiring to defraud regulators, the company said. The

planemaker has significantly strengthened, and increased

investment in, its safety and compliance practices, Boeing ( BA ) said.

Boeing ( BA ) in July finalized the agreement with prosecutors

requiring the planemaker to plead guilty to fraud in connection

with the two fatal plane crashes.

The planemaker agreed to pay up to a $487.2 million fine and

spend at least $455 million on improving safety and compliance

practices over three years of court-supervised probation as part

of the plea deal. The agreement allows the judge to cut the fine

in half by crediting Boeing ( BA ) for money it previously paid in the

case.

Justice Department officials pushed Boeing ( BA ) to take the plea deal

after finding the company had violated the terms of a 2021

agreement that had shielded it from prosecution over the

crashes, which effectively reopened the case.

That finding followed a separate January in-flight blowout that

exposed ongoing safety and quality issues at Boeing ( BA ). A panel

blew off a new Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet during a Jan. 5 Alaska

Airlines flight, just two days before the 2021 agreement

shielding Boeing ( BA ) from prosecution over the previous fatal

crashes expired.

In the criminal case over the fatal crashes, prosecutors

contend they have extracted an agreement from Boeing ( BA ) to plead

guilty to the most serious charge they could prove, along with

payment of the maximum legally allowed penalty.

The two crashes at the center of the criminal case against

Boeing ( BA ) occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia over a five-month

period.

A guilty plea, should the judge accept it, would brand

Boeing a convicted felon for conspiring to defraud the U.S.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about problematic software

affecting the flight-control systems in the planes.

On top of the plea deal's financial implications, the

agreement also imposes a monitor to audit Boeing's ( BA ) safety and

compliance efforts and allows the judge at sentencing to force

the company to pay additional compensation to families whose

relatives died in the crashes.

Polish national airline LOT also opposes the plea deal and

has argued it should have the same rights as the crash victims'

families.

Victims' relatives want Boeing ( BA ) and its executives charged

with crimes holding them responsible for the deaths of their

loved ones and any evidence of wrongdoing presented in a public

trial. They have also argued Boeing ( BA ) should have to pay up to

$24.78 billion in connection with the crashes.

Judge O'Connor, considered one of the most conservative

judges in the country, has previously expressed strong sympathy

for the families of the 737 MAX crash victims and called the

Boeing ( BA ) case "the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history."