Boeing 737 MAX victim's family awarded $29 million

A Chicago jury awarded $29 million in damages to the family of Michael “Mick” Ryan, an Irish-born United Nations employee who died in a 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crash, a US court spokesman said Wednesday.

The civil suit was brought against Boeing by Ryan's widow, Naoise Connolly Ryan. Ryan, 39, was an engineer with the UN World Food Programme and was one of 157 people killed when an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed.

A UN memorial page recognized Ryan's work during the Ebola crisis in Liberia, with Rohingya refugees and in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Ethiopia.

The case is one of the final remaining civil suits against Boeing after two deadly 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed a combined 346 people. Most claims have been settled out of court on undisclosed terms.

Boeing has apologized for the crashes and acknowledged that anti-stall software was implicated in both accidents. In May, a Chicago jury awarded $49.5 million in damages to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old American killed on the same Ethiopian Airlines flight.