Family of Sheffield’s Samya Stumo files lawsuit against aircraft manufacturer Boeing

Sheffield — Alleging negligence, a failure to warn and civil conspiracy, the family of the late Samya Stumo of Sheffield has filed a lawsuit against aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

Samya Stumo, 25, and a 2010 graduate of Mount Everett Regional School, died as a result of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 near the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on March 10.

“Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX 8 to market, with the knowledge and tacit approval of the United States Federal Aviation Administration,” the lawsuit says. “Boeing’s decision to put profits over safety … and the regulators that enabled it, must be held accountable for their reckless actions.”

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, also names Rosemount Aerospace Inc., the Delaware company that made the airplane’s flight control system known as MCAS, which is now under scrutiny by investigators and is thought to have contributed to the crash of the Boeing 737 Max 8 that killed all 157 people onboard, as well as a deadly Oct. 29 crash of a 737 Max in Indonesia. 

Meanwhile, the aircraft has been grounded in several countries, including the U.S., and the Sheffield family also plans to file a complaint against the Federal Aviation Administration. 

At a news conference yesterday in Chicago, where Boeing is headquartered, attorneys from the Clifford Law Firm representing Stumo’s parents, Michael Stumo and Nadia Milleron of Sheffield, said the Ethiopian crash “should never have happened” and that “the shortcuts and greed of Boeing and others will be proven in the ensuing lawsuits as well as the utter disregard of the passengers they were to protect that could have avoided this tragic crash.”

See video below of portions of a news conference including statements by Samya Stumo’s mother, Nadia Milleron of Sheffield, and Stumo’s great uncle, Ralph Nader:

In a tearful statement, Milleron said: “I want her death not to be in vain … Those in charge of creating and selling this plane did not treat Samya as they would their own daughters.” 

Stumo’s great uncle, consumer activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, insisted that: “Those planes should never fly again. The 737 Max 8 must be recalled.” Nader also took aim at the FAA:

“If we don’t end the cozy relationship between the patsy FAA … and the Boeing company, 5,000 of these fatally flawed planes will be in the air all over the world with millions of passengers.”

A preliminary report released Thursday by Ethiopian officials said the pilot of Flight 302 “performed all the procedures, repeatedly, provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft.” In response to the report, Boeing executives issued a statement. Click here to read it in full.

In an interview yesterday with National Public Radio, Nader reiterated his call for a recall and said the 737 Max 8 “was defectively designed. It was put in larger engines which destabilized the aerodynamics of the plane.”

At the time of her death, Stumo had just started working at ThinkWell, a health systems development organization. When the crash occurred, she was presumed to be traveling on business.

Stumo, who grew up on a farm in Sheffield, was a 2015 graduate of UMass Amherst and had received a master’s degree in global health from the University of Copenhagen. She had also worked at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health in Spain. 

Stumo’s father, Michael Stumo, is an attorney and is CEO of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nonprofit organization that focuses on trade policy reform. Her mother, Nadia Milleron, is an attorney and a volunteer with the Sheffield Land Trust. Samya Stumo’s grandmother is Laura Nader, a noted anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the sister of Ralph Nader.