Kenyan Families of Ethiopian Plane Crash Victims Warned of US Law Firms Purporting to Represent Them

The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has warned families of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash victims of foreign law firms offering to represent them in court. 

This comes after two United States law firms; Friedman Rubin and Shakespear N. Feyissa placed an advertisement in a local newspaper last week purporting to pursue justice for the Kenyan nationals who perished in the Nairobi-bound flight on March 10th, 2019.

The two firms said their lawyers would arrive in Nairobi on Sunday for meetings with families of the victims.

They also said that selected family members would be taken on due diligence trips to the US as their lawyers build their case against American aircraft maker Boeing.

In a statement, LSK president Allen Gichuhi said the two firms are not qualified to practice in Kenya under provisions of the Advocates Act.

“This is to caution unsuspecting members of the public that the persons appearing on the piece published by the Daily Nation purporting to offer legal services to families of the victims of the Ethiopian airplane crash are not qualified to practice law in Kenya under the provisions of the Advocates Act,” reads the statement.

Gichuhi said LSK is investigating how the foreigners were allowed to offer legal services in the country.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft went down six minutes after leaving Bole International Airport, killing all the 157 people onboard including 36 Kenyans.

The accident raised questions about the safety of the new Boeing model that also crashed in Indonesia in October.

A recently released report showed that Ethiopian Airlines pilots wrestled with controls to stay aloft but the plane went down after restoring a computer system that was ordering the nose down because of faulty sensor data.