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Aisyah Llewellyn

For Indonesian families who lost loved ones in the 2018 Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, the latest development in the US courts has deepened their pain that justice remains out of reach.
Keith Griffin, a Californian lawyer who worked with disgraced Hollywood celebrity lawyer Tom Girardi in compensation suits related to the crash, was sentenced by a federal court in Chicago last week to one day in prison with credit for time served, meaning he avoided any further time behind bars.
Girardi’s firm represented some of the Lion Air victims’ families in claims against Boeing, which agreed to pay undisclosed compensation after the crash of Lion Air flight JT610, one of two fatal disasters involving the US firm’s 737 Max planes.
Griffin had pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court after admitting that he knew Girardi had failed to distribute settlement funds to families of the Lion Air victims, despite a court order requiring the money to be paid.
He was also sentenced to two years of supervised release, under which he must comply with conditions set by the court and report to probation officials.
His boss Girardi was convicted of illegally pocketing more than US$2 million in money meant for the victims’ families and US$15 million in other compensation and personal injury cases. Last year, he was sentenced to over seven years in prison. He has also declared bankruptcy and was disbarred.
For families who had already endured years of litigation after the fatal crash, the sentence marked another blow in their effort to hold to account the lawyers entrusted with the compensation.

Bias Ramadhan, whose mother Hasna was on the doomed Lion Air flight, told This Week in Asia that he was “disappointed” with the verdict against Griffin.
“But I had not been getting my hopes up, considering how long and complicated the legal process has been,” said Ramadhan, who attended Girardi’s sentencing in 2024.
Ramadhan said he had wanted to be in court to see Griffin sentenced but had not been able to travel to the US for the hearing.
“Unfortunately, the majority of Girardi-Keese’s clients will never receive the settlement money they are owed,” he said, referring to the name of Girardi’s law firm.
Prosecutors had sought a three-month jail sentence for Griffin after David Lira, another Girardi-Keese lawyer, received a four-month term as part of the same case last year.
In court, Griffin argued that he was “the least culpable participant in this offence”.
Anton Sahadi, whose wife lost her 24-year-old cousins, Riyan Aryandi and Ravi Andrian, in the crash, said Girardi-Keese had originally reached out to his family with an offer to act on their behalf when suing Boeing for compensation.

However, Sahadi said that he had felt uncomfortable with the firm and decided to seek legal representation elsewhere.
Following the news of Griffin’s sentencing, Sahadi said: “The court should not have shown leniency simply because Griffin claimed to have been ‘pressured by his superiors’. Being aware that the wrongdoing persisted while remaining silent makes Griffin complicit,” he said.
“The families of the plane crash victims were in a highly vulnerable position, both emotionally and financially. Withholding their financial entitlements further exploited the victims’ powerlessness.”
Lion Air flight JT610 was travelling from Jakarta to the Bangka-Belitung islands in October 2018 when it plunged into the Java Sea shortly after take-off, killing everyone on board.
Following the crash, Boeing initially insisted that its planes were safe and claimed that pilot error had been a factor.
In March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which was also flying with the then-new Boeing 737 Max aircraft, crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board.
An investigation later found that the flight manoeuvring systems on the two planes malfunctioned after take-off. In the case of the Lion Air crash, the pilots were not informed about the new system and had not been trained on its use.

Apart from the undisclosed compensation to the families, Boeing was also slapped with a US$200 million fine by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission after it found that the company misled investors about the safety of its planes.
The case against Girardi, Griffin and Lira only came to light when their firm engaged Chicago-based law firm Edelson to sue Boeing.
After a settlement deal was secured from Boeing, Edelson received word from the families in Indonesia that they had not received the money from Girardi-Keese.
Ramadhan and four other families were finally awarded a total of US$2 million in 2022 when Edelson compensated them and alerted the authorities, which led to dozens of victims in other cases filing complaints against Girardi-Keese about their missing funds.
Speaking about the latest verdict, a US lawyer involved in the Lion Air litigation, who requested anonymity because of his role, told This Week in Asia that Griffin had received a low sentence because of the sentences handed down to others involved in the case.
As Lira was only sentenced to four months in prison, it was determined that Griffin was less culpable in comparison and that he did not deserve to be in prison, the lawyer continued. The one-day sentence allowed the judge to impose a term of supervised release, the lawyer added.
“Federal judges in the United States have a great deal of autonomy with respect to sentencing. There are factors they are required to consider and a guideline sentencing range, but they get to decide which factors are more or less important.”

Alvin Lie, the head of the Indonesian Air Transportation Service User Association who assisted the affected families in 2018, said the Girardi debacle and Griffin’s sentencing should be viewed as separate from the wider issues surrounding the Lion Air crash. The cases against the two men were purely about “theft and embezzlement”, he added.
“I am disappointed as these kinds of predatory lawyers were quite active in contacting the families of the victims of the Lion Air crash at the time. They would come to the victims and offer that they would fight for compensation on a no-win, no-fee basis,” Lie said.
“I have the greatest sympathy for the families who became victims twice over, once when the crash happened and they lost their loved ones, and again when their right to compensation was violated by these predatory lawyers.”


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Ravi Andrian, one of the people who died in the crash of Lion Air flight 610. Photo: Anton Sahadi

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A cockpit voice recorder from Lion Air flight 610 displayed to the media after its recovery at sea in 2019. Photo: AFP

US investigators examine parts recovered from the crash of Lion Air flight 610 at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta in 2018. Photo: AP

A relative of a passenger who died on Lion Air JT-610 crash at the Java Sea cries as she arrives at Jakarta International Port after attending the one-year commemoration of the crash in Jakarta in 2019. Photo: Reuters

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Keith Griffin has admitted that he knew his boss Tom Girardi failed to distribute settlement funds to families of the Lion Air victims


Keith Griffin has admitted that he knew his boss Tom Girardi failed to distribute settlement funds to families of the Lion Air victims.


Indonesian families of Lion Air crash victims suffer again, ‘predatory’ lawyer evades jail

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Keith Griffin has admitted that he knew his boss Tom Girardi failed to distribute settlement funds to families of the Lion Air victims

Keith Griffin has admitted that he knew his boss Tom Girardi failed to distribute settlement funds to families of the Lion Air victims