While the potential future litigation pot is being stirred . . . a civil suit brought against Boeing might be very enticing for enterprising legal counsel, and based on a factor that might not be superficially obvious.
Many observers have noted in varying degrees of depth, detail and indignation the decline of Boeing and its departure from the engineering powerhouse of times past. Much of that background information leads directly to the "operative facts" concerning Boeing's failures in designing and bringing to the marketplace the 737 MAX version of the venerable old workhorse - in other words significant portions of that lengthy background saga easily appear relevant to the direct facts about the MAX debacle. And there are several sets of information already gathered and accumulated by pretty reliable processes - a great deal of information was produced by the FAA in the Forkner criminal matter; the House Committee investigation; the FAA/DOT Inspector General process; the shareholder derivative suit in Delaware . . . and this SLF/atty is not privy to what extent discovery may have reached into new and otherwise not disclosed information in the tort suits on behalf of crash victims.
It is more than plausible to conclude that as yet, no court action has assembled through the impactful processes of discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure the full set, or even a mostly full set, of information about what Boeing did wrong and how those wrongful acts occurred. A defamation suit against Boeing might provide such a vehicle, and consider: many observers have argued (myself included) that Mr. Forkner was indeed in the wrong-place wrong-time situation of vulnerability for scapegoating. Exhibit A, the Deferred Prosecution Agreement by which Boeing skated away, "pretty much," with the former tech pilot twisting in the wind.
This is not a prediction of success or of viability or lack of viability of any particular legal claim - the point is, with all the derision cast upon Boeing for all its misdeeds which led up to the 737 MAX debacle, and all the decisions (acts as well as omissions) that constituted the debacle itself - and its aftermath (like the time period between the two crashes) - one would think that assembling all the relevant information that already has been gathered in other forums, and then . . . . oh I don't know, I'm showing you what the court reporter has marked as Plaintiff's Exhibit 4 thousand 3 hundred 12 for identification, have you seen this document before?