By Jonathan Stempel
July 20 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Monday decertified a shareholder class action accusing Boeing of prioritizing profit over safety and overstating its commitment to safe aircraft, prior to the January 2024 mid-air cabin panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said shareholders led by Rhode Island's state treasurer did not show how damages could be calculated on a classwide basis, or how much Boeing's 40 alleged misrepresentations
artificially inflated its stock price at any particular time.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. said a damages expert for Boeing shareholders offered "a series of 'maybes,' 'perhapses' and 'what ifs.'"
He also said the trial judge did not properly apply a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision to decertify an antitrust class action by Comcast cable TV subscribers.
The Rhode Island treasurer and lawyers for the shareholders did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Boeing and its lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests.
'SAFETY DOMINATES BOEING' CLAIMED
Class actions can allow greater recoveries at lower cost than individual lawsuits.
Shareholders accused Boeing of inflating its stock price with false and misleading assurances, including that "safety dominates Boeing" and employees could speak up when problems arose, after two MAX planes crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, killing 346.
One flight attendant and seven passengers suffered minor injuries when a cabin panel blew out on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5, 2024, shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon.
Boeing's share price fell 8% the next trading day.
SEPARATE CLASS ACTION OVER MAX CRASHES
The blowout prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal probe, and declare that Boeing was not complying with its 2021 agreement to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle a criminal charge related to the MAX crashes.
In June 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board said Boeing failed to install four bolts securing the cabin panel on Flight 1282, and lacked adequate training and oversight to prevent the blowout.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, had in March 2025 certified a class of shareholders who owned Boeing stock between January 7, 2021 and January 8, 2024. The appeals court returned the case to her.
Boeing faces a separate shareholder class action stemming from the MAX crashes, which a Chicago federal judge certified in March.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Andrea Ricci )
