Chicago, November 13, 2025: A U.S. federal jury in Chicago has ordered Boeing to pay US $28 million to the family of Shikha Garg, an Indian United Nations consultant killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. It is the first civil jury verdict to emerge from litigation over the Boeing 737 MAX disasters, and it sets a rare public benchmark for the small number of wrongful-death cases that remain unresolved after most families reached confidential settlements with Boeing.
The Only MAX Case to Reach a Jury
Boeing accepted liability for the 2019 crash in 2021, meaning jurors were asked only to determine damages. The consolidated federal litigation originally selected three bellwether cases for trial. But just before opening statements in November, two of those families reached last-minute settlements with Boeing, including one on the morning the trial was set to begin. This left only the case of Shikha Garg to proceed before a jury.
A bellwether trial is one of the first cases selected to go before a jury in large, complex litigations involving many similar lawsuits. The results help lawyers and the court understand how juries may respond to the evidence, what a typical verdict might look like, and how remaining cases should be valued. Because most 737 MAX wrongful-death claims were settled confidentially, the Garg case became the only bellwether to reach a jury—making its verdict an important signal for the remaining families and the future of the litigation.
The Garg family was represented by Kline & Specter, P.C. of Philadelphia, one of the lead plaintiffs’ firms in the 737 MAX multidistrict litigation. Their decision not to settle made this the first, and so far only, civil MAX case to be decided in open court.
The Award and the Arguments
The jury awarded $28 million in damages. In addition, Boeing will pay $3.45 million to Garg’s husband under a separate agreement, plus a 26% interest charge, bringing the total payout to the family to $35.8 million, according to the Associated Press.
This is the largest publicly known award in the 737 MAX litigation to date.
Attorneys for the Garg family argued that Shikha Garg likely experienced fear, awareness and terror during the aircraft’s final, unstable descent. They highlighted her age, future earning potential, and the violent sequence of events in ET302’s last seconds. Garg, a young PhD candidate working as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program, was travelling to Nairobi to attend a U.N. environmental assembly. She had married just months before the crash.
Boeing’s legal team urged the jury to award ‘fair and reasonable’ compensation, arguing that the evidence did not prove passengers experienced conscious pain before impact. Fear and suffering was a central point of contention in the damages phase, with Boeing’s lead attorney asserting that the extreme forces moments before the crash meant there was ‘not time for them to feel any physical pain.’
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi crashed six minutes after takeoff on 10 March 2019, killing all 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board. The crash occurred less than five months after Lion Air Flight 610, also a 737 MAX, went down in Indonesia. The two disasters led to a 20-month global grounding of the 737 MAX and long-term reputational and regulatory consequences for Boeing.
The Significance of the Verdict
The verdict is significant because it marks the first time a jury has publicly quantified damages for a 737 MAX victim; all prior resolutions were confidential settlements rather than jury awards. The outcome reinforces a long-standing principle in U.S. aviation litigation that damages are tied to a victim’s demonstrated earning trajectory, including international career paths where applicable. It also sets a benchmark for valuing non-economic harms such as fear, terror and emotional distress, indicating that similarly substantial awards remain possible if any of the remaining cases proceed to trial.
With fewer than a dozen wrongful-death cases still active in the MDL, the Garg verdict now serves as the key valuation reference point for the remaining families, shaping expectations for any final settlements or future jury trials. The size and visibility of the award may also influence plaintiffs’ willingness to take their cases to trial rather than accept confidential resolutions.
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