A federal jury has granted $49.5 million to the family of a 24-year-old nonprofit worker who tragically died in the 2019 crash of a Boeing 737 Max jet in Ethiopia. She was en route to embark on her first major assignment.
This decision, delivered Wednesday by a federal court in Chicago, concludes one of the remaining wrongful death cases linked to the disaster that claimed the lives of all 157 passengers on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
Samya Stumo, a native of Sheffield, Massachusetts, had recently started working with a nonprofit aimed at improving health systems in developing nations. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015, she was headed to Uganda for her inaugural project with the organization when the aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019.
Following the crash, a UMass spokesperson highlighted her ability to connect with others, earning their respect, friendship, and trust.
The jury awarded $21 million for the pain, suffering, and emotional distress Stumo endured during the flight, $16.5 million for her family’s loss of companionship, and $12 million for their grief, as stated by the attorneys representing her estate.
In a statement released Wednesday evening, attorneys Shanin Specter and Elizabeth Crawford expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to present the compensatory damages case, following the announcement of the verdict.
It is the second verdict tied to the crash. Boeing has reached confidential pre-trial settlements in most of the dozens of wrongful death lawsuits filed in connection with the Ethiopian Airlines disaster and a similar 737 Max crash five months earlier off the coast of Indonesia that together killed 346 people.
The fatal crashes became a defining crisis for Boeing and the 737 Max program. Investigators found that a 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.
The verdict follows a November 2025 jury award of $28.45 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a United Nations environmental consultant who also died in the 2019 crash. That case marked the first civil jury trial stemming from the disaster, with jurors similarly tasked only with calculating damages because Boeing has accepted liability.
“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,” a Boeing spokesperson said Thursday in a statement.
The Ethiopian Airlines crash prompted a worldwide grounding of the 737 Max that lasted more than a year and triggered multiple investigations into Boeing’s safety culture and regulatory oversight.
Federal prosecutors later charged Boeing with misleading regulators about the Max’s flight-control system, though in November, the federal judge in Texas overseeing the long-running criminal case approved a Justice Department request to dismiss it. Prosecutors reached an agreement with Boeing, requiring the company to invest an additional $1 billion in fines, family compensation and safety improvements.
Stumo’s family has been among the most outspoken relatives seeking accountability from Boeing and changes to federal aviation oversight. Her father, Michael Stumo, has publicly pressed Boeing, regulators and Congress over what families viewed as failures that allowed the 737 Max to keep flying after the first crash off the coast of Indonesia.
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