Avia Capital Services (ACS), which is a subsidiary of the Russian Rostec state corporation, filed a lawsuit against the US aircraft manufacture to break the contract on deliveries of 35 Boeing 737 Max jets as this type of aircraft was grounded worldwide over security concerns.
"The damage claim is over 120 million and with punitive damages it's going to be many times that amount", Marks said on Tuesday. "The damage claim is from a compensatory damage standpoint, it's over $120 million, and with punitive damages it will be many times that amount. It will be decided by a jury".
Marks noted that the Russian company tried to settle claims against Boeing without trial, but the US aircraft maker did not agree to an acceptable solution.
"There was an effort to try and resolve that matter amicably, and Boeing could not or did not or was unwilling to consider a reasonable resolution, which is what required the lawsuit. We were trying to avoid it", the lawyer said.
Avia Capital Services said it has given Boeing a cash deposit of $35 million as part of the order and asks the money to be returned with interest along with millions in lost profits.
Two Boeing 737 MAX planes have crashed in less than a year: one in Indonesia in October 2018 and another in Ethiopia in March.
In the wake of the latest crash, aviation authorities and carriers around the world have either grounded all 737 MAX series aircraft, or closed their airspace to them.
The investigations into the incidents are underway but experts believe that a new automated stall-prevention system, called MCAS, could be behind the crashes. MCAS commands automatically push down the jet’s nose in case of a critical angle of attack.
However, when the information coming from sensors is wrong, such actions of the security system may pose a danger to the plane as MCAS commands may overpower pilots’ attempts to pull up the nose of the jet.
According to investigators, pilots of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet needed more than four minutes to realize that incorrect data from sensors urged MCAS to push the nose down in a situation when there was no need in that.
Steven Marks also said Tuesday that other aircraft carriers from around the world are looking into filing lawsuits against Boeing.
"We’ve been discussing with many other operators and carriers. And we’re discussing the possibility of them joining the litigation [...] They would be filing their own individual claims... They are not Russian. They are from all over the world but not in the US currently", Marks stressed.