A federal jury in Chicago awarded $49.5 million to the family of Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old global nonprofit worker killed in the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a verdict reached Wednesday after a trial in federal court, according to court reporting. The decision resolves one of the last remaining wrongful-death lawsuits tied to the disaster, which killed all 157 people aboard the Boeing 737 Max jet, the reporting said.
Stumo, who grew up in Sheffield, Massachusetts, had recently joined a nonprofit focused on strengthening health systems in developing countries, the reporting said. She was traveling to Uganda for what would have been her first major assignment with the organization when the plane crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, according to the account.
Attorneys representing Stumo’s estate said jurors awarded $21 million for the pain and suffering and emotional distress Stumo experienced aboard the doomed flight. The same attorneys said jurors awarded $16.5 million for the loss of companionship suffered by Stumo’s family and $12 million for their grief.
In a statement announcing the verdict Wednesday evening, attorneys Shanin Specter and Elizabeth Crawford said, “We are gratified for the opportunity to try the compensatory damages case.” They made the remarks as jurors limited their work to calculating damages because Boeing has accepted liability for the crash, the reporting said.
The case is part of a broader wave of litigation and resolutions tied to the 737 Max crashes. The reporting said it was the second verdict tied to the Ethiopian Airlines disaster after a November 2025 jury award of $28.45 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a United Nations environmental consultant who also died in Flight 302. In that earlier matter, jurors similarly calculated damages after Boeing accepted liability, the reporting said.
The reporting also noted that Boeing has reached confidential pre-trial settlements in most of the dozens of wrongful-death lawsuits filed in connection with Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and another 737 Max crash five months earlier off the coast of Indonesia that together killed 346 people. Boeing, the reporting said, has said it is deeply sorry to families and that most claims have been resolved through settlements while still respecting the right of families to pursue court processes.
A Boeing spokesperson said Thursday, “We are deeply sorry to all who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. While we have resolved nearly all of these claims through settlements, families are entitled to pursue their claims through the court process, and we respect their right to do so.” The reporting said federal prosecutors later charged Boeing with misleading regulators about the 737 Max’s flight-control system, but a federal judge in Texas overseeing the criminal case approved a Justice Department request to dismiss the charges in November, after prosecutors reached an agreement requiring Boeing to invest an additional $1 billion in fines, family compensation and safety improvements.
The Ethiopian Airlines crash prompted a worldwide grounding of the 737 Max that lasted more than a year, and triggered investigations into Boeing’s safety culture and regulatory oversight, according to the reporting. Investigators found the flight-control system repeatedly forced the nose of the then-new planes downward based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and pilots in both crashes were unable to regain control.