'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Families of passengers who died in the crash of a Boeing 737 Max in Ethiopia can seek damages for the pain and terror suffered by victims in the minutes before the plane flew nose-down into the ground, a federal judge has ruled.
The ruling means that lawyers for the families will be able to call experts to testify about the victims' pain and suffering before the 2019 crash, which killed everyone on board.
The ruling posted late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso in Chicago is a setback for Boeing, which had argued that evidence about the victims' suffering would be speculative.
The decision comes in a case over compensation for the relatives of people who died in the second of two deadly crashes involving Boeing's best-selling plane. A trial is scheduled to begin June 20.
Boeing has admitted responsibility for the deaths of the passengers and agreed not to blame the pilots or anyone else. In exchange, lawyers for the families agreed not to seek punitive damages against the company. The trial will determine compensation for things such as burial expenses, loss of income, and grief suffered by immediate family members.
At a hearing last week, Boeing lawyers sought to block testimony about pain and suffering by passengers in the minutes before the crash. They said the testimony would be inflammatory and have an unfair impact on jurors.
Boeing lawyers also said that Illinois law - in effect even though the case is being tried in federal court - bars compensatory damages for the passengers' pain and suffering because they died the instant the plane hit the ground.
Attorneys for the families say their clients can't stop thinking about the terror their loved ones suffered as the plane repeatedly dove and climbed before entering a final nosedive at nearly 700 miles (1126 km) per hour. The attorneys want to call experts who would testify that the passengers likely suffered physical injuries and emotional trauma before the crash.
There are bound to be further arguments over rules of the trial, including whether to call the crash an accident. One of the families' lawyers, Robert Clifford, said he wants to call the crater left by the crash a crime scene. Clifford said this week's ruling will help families receive compensation for pain suffered by relatives “who needlessly died at the hands of a company that put profits over safety.”
Asked for comment on the ruling, a Boeing spokeswoman referred to a previous statement in which Boeing said it was sorry for all who lost loved ones in the two crashes. The company said it has kept a commitment to settle “to fully and fairly compensate every family who suffered a loss” by settling most of the claims, and will continue negotiating over the remaining claims.
In 2021, Boeing reached a settlement with the Justice Department to avoid criminal prosecution for misleading federal regulators who approved the Max by hiding details of a flight-control system implicated in the crashes. The company received a $244 million fine and agreed to pay compensation to airlines and victims, raising the cost of the deal to $2.5 billion.
In all, 346 people died in the two crashes involving Max jets shortly after airlines around the world began using the planes. In October 2018, a Lion Air Max crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. Less than five months later, in March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines Max carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa.
Boeing has settled with most families of people on board the Lion Air jet and many of those on the Ethiopian plane, but lawyers say about 75 cases remain open, and six will be included in the upcoming trial in federal court in Chicago.
Boeing is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, but it was based in Chicago when the first lawsuits were filed in 2019.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.