A US judge in Texas ruled on Friday that people killed in two Boeing (BA) 737 MAX crashes are legally considered “crime victims,” a designation that will determine what remedies should be imposed.In December, some crash victims’ relatives said the US Justice Department violated their legal rights when it struck a January 2021 deferred prosecution agreement with the planemaker over two crashes that killed 346 people.The families argued the government “lied and violated their rights through a secret process” and asked US District Judge Reed O’Connor to rescind Boeing’s immunity from criminal prosecution – which was part of the $2.5 billion agreement – and order the planemaker publicly arraigned on felony charges.After the families filed the legal challenge saying their rights were violated under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, Attorney General Merrick Garland met with some of them but stood by the plea deal, which included a $244 million fine, $1.77 billion compensation to airlines and a $500 million crash-victim fund.“Had Boeing not committed its crime” pilots in Ethiopia and Indonesia would have “received training adequate to respond to the MCAS activation that occurred on both aircrafts,” O’Connor ruled."