Boeing and Alaska Airlines rejected legal responsibility for passenger injuries during a January incident in which a door plug blew out of a 737 Max jet shortly after departure.

Following the blowout, passengers filed three separate lawsuits at the state level in Oregon and Washington state, as well as with federal courts. In the federal lawsuit, passengers claimed they were physically injured and emotionally traumatized when the cabin immediately depressurized. Boeing and Alaska Airlines have issued their first, separate responses to the lawsuits, with neither company claiming it is responsible for the incident that took place in early January. 

While Boeing admitted that the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation that discovered the door plug was missing four bolts was accurate, the company denied liability for passengers’ alleged injuries in documents filed to the U.S. district court in Seattle. In Boeing’s response to the plaintiffs, it said the company is not responsible for injuries resulting from products “improperly maintained, or misused by persons and/or entities other than Boeing.” 

Alaska Airlines echoed the plane maker’s claims and, in its response, said it was not responsible for injuries or damages that “were caused by the fault of persons or entities over whom Alaska Airlines has no control … including but not limited to Defendant The Boeing Company and/or non-party Spirit AeroSystems.”

Daniel Laurence, the attorney representing the passengers of the class-action lawsuit, said on Wednesday he was “surprised” the plane maker and airline didn’t want to take accountability and move on from the situation. 

“They’re putting up a wall and circling the wagons,” Laurence said. “That’s disappointing, given what I think most of the population believes and the evidence appears to clearly support — that they put this aircraft into the air with an unsecured door plug that, had it come out a few minutes later, would have killed everybody on board.”

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In the class-action lawsuit, passengers claim the rapid pressure change caused by the door blowout made ears bleed and caused head pain and traumatic stress. In the filings, passengers allege the oxygen masks deployed did not work, which Alaska Airlines denied. 

Boeing’s and Alaska Airlines’s responses follow a surge of public and regulatory scrutiny of the quality of Boeing’s products, resulting in a string of investigations and audits from the NTSB, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department of Justice. Boeing, which has been in the hot seat recently due to several 737 Max mishaps since the Jan. 5 incident, has been accused by the NTSB of being uncooperative for not turning over documents related to the door plug blowout, which the company claimed did not exist.