Ethiopian Airlines Crash: Irish Family Wins $29m from Boeing as Compensation Gulf with African Victims' Families Persists

A Chicago jury has awarded $29 million in damages to the family of Michael "Mick" Ryan, an Irish-born engineer with the United Nations World Food Programme who was among 157 people killed in the March 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. The verdict, delivered this week, is one of the final civil cases stemming from the Boeing 737 MAX disaster, and again throws into sharp relief the vast disparity between what grieving families have received depending on where, and how, their cases were resolved.

Who Was Mick Ryan
Ryan, 39 at the time of the crash, was originally from Lahinch in County Clare and had lived in Cork with his wife, Naoise Connolly Ryan, and their two children before relocating for his UN work. He served as deputy chief engineer with the World Food Programme, work that took him through some of the world's toughest humanitarian emergencies, including the Ebola crisis response in Liberia and support for Rohingya refugees, with a UN memorial page also recognizing his service in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Ethiopia.

Rather than accept a private settlement from Boeing, as most families did, Connolly Ryan chose to pursue the case before a US jury. Her attorney, Steven Marks, said she had shown "extraordinary strength and determination" in her pursuit of accountability, adding that while the verdict marked a significant milestone, the broader effort to hold Boeing responsible remained just as important. In a statement, Boeing said it remained "deeply sorry to all who lost loved ones" on the Ethiopian Airlines and earlier Lion Air flights, noting that while it had resolved nearly all claims through settlements, families were entitled to pursue their claims through the courts.

A Stark Compensation Gap
The Ryan verdict follows a similar award in May, when another Chicago jury granted $49.5 million to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American aid worker who also died in the crash [4]. Both cases stand in sharp contrast to how most African families' claims were resolved. In December 2020, the first Kenyan family to settle with Boeing, represented by Ribbeck Law Chartered, agreed to a payout of roughly $3 million, a sum lawyers at the time described as a "record-breaking" settlement despite being a fraction of what US juries have since awarded.

Flight ET302, bound for Nairobi, killed all 157 people aboard, including 32 Kenyans and nine Ethiopians, alongside citizens of Canada, Italy, China, the United States, Britain, France, Egypt, Germany, India and several other countries [7]. Most claims from the disaster, including the bulk of those brought by African families, were resolved through confidential settlements rather than public trials, with Boeing separately establishing a $100 million community fund intended to support education and living costs for affected families across the affected countries.

Why the Gap Persists
The disparity reflects less a difference in the value US courts place on victims by nationality than differences in legal strategy and access. Families who pursued individual jury trials in the United States, as the Ryan and Stumo families did, have generally secured far larger awards than those who accepted early settlements negotiated on behalf of larger groups of claimants, many of them African families represented collectively rather than through individual civil suits.

Compensation in negotiated settlements has also historically been calculated using formulas weighing a victim's age and earnings at the time of death, a method that tends to produce lower payouts for claimants from lower-income countries.

The Ryan case is among the last remaining civil suits tied to the two 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which together killed 346 people and triggered a worldwide grounding of the aircraft after investigators found Boeing's MCAS anti-stall software played a central role in both disasters.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.
International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP
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References
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