US trial opens on UN worker killed in Boeing 737 MAX crash

A US trial opened Monday for a lawsuit by relatives of Michael 'Mick' Ryan, a UN World Food Programme engineer killed in the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash.

Ryan's widow Naoise Ryan rejected Boeing's voluntary payment as 'blood money' and redirected her $1.65 million allotment to an aviation safety foundation.

A Chicago jury will hear the case, which is one of the final civil claims from the 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people.

In May, a Chicago jury awarded $49.5 million to the family of Samya Stumo, another victim of the same Ethiopian Airlines flight.

Boeing has apologized for the crashes and acknowledged that anti-stall software was implicated in both accidents.