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But he must endure as he continues to fight for justice, if only measured by monetary metrics.

The É«É«À² man lost his entire family — wife, three young children, mother-in-law — in the March 10, 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in which all 157 passengers and crew died when the plane fell out of the sky six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

That disaster occurred five months after a Lion Air commercial aircraft crashed into the Java Sea — both planes were Boeing 737 MAX jetliners — killing all 189 people on board.

Boeing has been accused of fraud and criminality, amidst claims the second disaster might not have happened had Boeing provided information requested by Ethiopian Airlines for dealing with erroneous activation of the flight stabilizing software system — falsely detecting an imminent stall — a miscalculation that repeatedly pushed the Lion Air plane into a nose-down position until it crashed.

A New York Times investigation uncovered emails supporting claims that the chief pilot of Ethiopian Airlines made an urgent request to Boeing for that information a month after the Lion Air crash. While Boeing did proactively reach out to U.S. airlines to explain the system’s technical and safety issues, it reportedly failed to respond to Ethiopian Airlines beyond referring the chief pilot to a summary of an operations manual bulletin.

Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association and a MAX 737 pilot, said: “Who knows what Ethiopian Airlines would have done with the information but not having it sealed the deal. Any information given the Ethiopian pilots, like we had, could have made the difference between life and death.’’

Boeing took full responsibility for the Ethiopian Airlines catastrophe, of which a U.S. District Court judge said in 2023: “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history.” The 737 MAX was grounded for two years.

The U.S. Justice Department investigated Boeing and settled the case in 2021 following secret negotiations, with the government agreeing not to prosecute Boeing on a charge of defrauding authorities by deceiving regulators who approved the plane. Boeing had pleaded guilty to defrauding federal regulators and agreed to pay $2.5 billion (U.S.) in fines and compensation, including a $243.6 million penalty and $500 million for crash victims’ families, in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution.

In 2019, Njoroge testified before a congressional aviation subcommittee: “I stay up nights thinking of the horror they must have endured,” he said of his family — Ryan, age six; Kellie, four; Rubi, nine months; spouse Carolyne and his mother-in-law. “As pilots struggled to keep the plane flying for six minutes — the terror that my wife must have experienced with little Rubi on her lap, our two children beside her crying for their daddy, and my mother-in-law feeling helpless beside her. The six minutes will forever be embedded in my mind.”

The family was on their way to visit relatives in Kenya. Many of the passengers on board — from 35 countries — were headed to a UN environmental conference in Nairobi.

Victim families asked a federal judge to reopen the original agreement with Boeing to focus on damages for the “crime victims.” Last month, Boeing and the Justice Department asked a judge to approve a new agreement that allows the company to avoid prosecution in a criminal trial that had been set for late June, and potentially being branded a convicted felon, after breaching the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.

Under the new agreement, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge — that it had misled regulators about the flight control system on the 737 MAX, its bestselling jet. But it would escape oversight from an independent monitor for three years that was part of the original plea deal. Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5 million in a crash victims fund to be divided evenly per crash victim, on top of a new $243-million fine.

But victim families could reject the agreement and pursue Boeing in civil suits. The overwhelming majority of families have accepted settlements, which have cost the company billions of dollars more. Njoroge is among a small number who have not settled. His civil suit is scheduled to be the first case to come to trial on Monday in Chicago — a jury trial. And juries have been exceedingly punitive with giant corporations that have caused tragedies.

All of this is happening amidst a flurry of aviation accidents in the past year that severely undercut public faith in the safety of air travel.

“This is not a class-action suit,” Robert Clifford, lead lawyer for Njoroge, emphasized in an interview with the Star. “It’s a consolidated action and each action has to be handled individually. Why the crash happened is common to everyone, but our damages are different. What makes Paul’s case unique is that he lost his entire family. Just an awful circumstance and we’ve not resolved it by settlement.”

That could still happen before Monday. Four similar suits have been settled in recent months. On Tuesday, a Boeing spokesperson told the Star: “We don’t have a comment on this.”

Clifford has brought hundreds of aviation lawsuits over the past half century and never lost a case. “I only hope for the right results if Boeing and insurers offer him an appropriate amount of money by our evaluation. Right now the prospect doesn’t look good. We’re not even talking settlement.”

Under the rules, Clifford can’t disclose what Boeing has offered to this point or what Njoroge is seeking.

“It’s a matter of perspective isn’t it?” Clifford continues. “ My client would rather have a jury decide what Boeing should pay rather than Boeing decide. Why would we allow the wrongdoer to decide the amount they have to pay in damages?”

Boeing has come under renewed scrutiny mere weeks after agreeing to the multibillion-dollar payout for the 737 MAX crashes with the June 12 calamity of Air India Flight 171, in which 241 people on board were killed — one passenger survived — and 29 on the ground. The 787 Dreamliner is manufactured by Boeing.

As well, Boeing is the manufacturer of the 737 MAX 9 — the Alaska Airways passenger plane in which disaster was averted after a door plug blew out mid-air on Jan. 5, 2024. The plane, carrying 171 passengers, made a safe emergency landing credited to the heroic crew of six.

Boeing came under withering criticism last week by the National Transportation Safety Board for failing to install four key bolts in the aircraft during production, and inadequate training, guidance and oversight. The safety deficiencies had been identified in numerous Boeing internal audits for at least 10 years, NTSB chair Jennifer É«É«À²ndy said at a board meeting in late June.

As for Paul Njoroge — he’s declined interviews until after a verdict — Clifford says the poor man is not faring well at all.

“You don’t move on. The world goes on around him but he remains the same. He’s reminded of his loss every day. They’ve destroyed his family and in the process they’ve destroyed him.”

He has not remarried and has no intention of fathering any more children.

“I asked him if he hopes to have more kids. He said: ‘I could not bear the thought of losing another child.’”