Herrmann Law Group Reaches Boeing Settlements for Lion Air 737 MAX Families

On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight JT610 plunged into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people aboard. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down because a faulty angle-of-attack sensor fed false data to the plane's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an automated anti-stall program that repeatedly forced the nose toward the water. Pilots had no warning the system existed: Boeing had removed any reference to MCAS from the flight manual, telling neither airlines nor pilots that it had been installed, and concealing from the FAA that the system's authority had been quadrupled during development.

Charles Herrmann of Seattle's Herrmann Law Group, joined by attorney Mark Lindquist, filed suit in King County Superior Court on March 7, 2019, on behalf of 17 Indonesian families. Within weeks, the firm expanded its docket to represent 46 families in total, the largest single-firm bloc of Lion Air plaintiffs to emerge from the Pacific Northwest.

The firm's core argument was that Boeing's conduct crossed from negligence into intentional concealment. Indonesia's final accident report backed that framing, describing how Boeing hid MCAS from the aviation system to preserve sales by minimizing perceived differences between the MAX and earlier 737 variants. Herrmann said the report 'essentially confirms that Boeing's actions moved from simple negligence in the first place to intentional misconduct as they tried to conceal their errors.'

By late October 2019, just before the one-year anniversary of the crash, Boeing had reached confidential settlements with four of the 46 families Herrmann represented, with negotiations continuing for the remaining cases. The amounts were not disclosed. The firm resolved cases for all 46 families before the end of 2020. A second 737 MAX crash, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019, resulted in the worldwide grounding of the aircraft and added pressure on Boeing throughout the settlement process.

No verdict was entered; all resolutions were confidential settlements. Herrmann Law Group operates out of Seattle's International District.