Did you demand that the Boeing management be held to task after the Lion Air crash. If not, what was it about the Ethiopian crash reporting changed your mind?
I believe your mind was convinced by the misstatements of the Ethiopian government that the pilots followed, without failure or any deviation, the instructions given them by Boeing and the FAA and you set that as your stake to which all other outrage is anchored because those instructions "didn't work."
All that needs to happen is for Boeing to get behind the investment curve and they can follow Douglas and Lockheed into the dust. I didn't ask for a number - I asked for an outcome. How badly hurt do you want Boeing to be? I suspect it is bankruptcy. Nothing short of the death penalty for the corporation. Because of that stake you planted.
What Boeing expected to happen with MCAS did happen. The day before the Lion Air crash. Nearly textbook execution of trim problem handling, almost exactly the way the failure mode team expected. Same initial flight deviations, but no one died, nor did any appear to express they felt they might. The pilots wrote it up as annoying.
How did the exact same plane with the exact same problem go from controllable to uncontrolled in less than 24 hours? Training and attitude.
That no one called for grounding the fleet after Lion Air is enough to tell me that no one thought MCAS was a problem.
Sure - this is the US, home to civil suits over the amount or kind of grass on a lawn. Everyone should be welcome to air any grievance they have the money to pay to pursue as long as a lot of money goes to lawyers. I don't care about that for this instance - I care about the intended result - what do the plaintiffs expect from this?
One claim "The attorneys want to call experts who would testify that the passengers likely suffered physical injuries and emotional trauma before the crash."
If they prevail on that then every bumpy flight is filled with passengers suffering emotional trauma. Where will experts come from? Are there people who have been killed in crashes who come back to testify that before the crash they were overcome by fear of dying and that this thought, not held long enough to make it to long term memory, haunted them for the rest of their lives? I guess it did. Like someone falling from a cliff has the rest of their life to avoid crashing on the rocks below.
Is it too much to ask if you think they can be made whole? Or is this revenge? Or a cash grab? Is there any amount large enough that no company will ever think of this failure to imagine a crew doing all the wrong steps in the wrong order and create a system that operates correctly in spite of 100% human failure? Or it doesn't matter because you personally are aggrieved at the actions of Boeing and are looking for standing on the coattails of this decision?
No point in asking for a legal opinion - you cannot make any because hypothetical, speculation, not being paid a retainer by me - about the likely effect this interpretation of a loophole in the current law will have elsewhere. This same type of loophole interpretation is what allows police to steal money and property under the pretext of Civil Asset Forfeiture and allows police to commit heinous actions and be protected by qualified immunity.
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I'll reiterate - the PACER terms of use appear to be charge for just making the inquiry in proportion to the size of the returned result. Charged for making the search. No need to deflect about downloading. You appear to agree that it is designed to seriously harm those without legal training - the ultimate paywall. What does a law degree cost? PACER is required to collect only enough to pay for its operation - instead it looks to be a piggy bank, charging far in excess of its operating costs and preventing non-legal trained people from learning about the legal system.