... you can pick them up in the usual place.
There are only two things I have to add to the discussion of the Titan/Titanic disaster:
1. OceanGate seems not to have considered that their target customer had enough cash to sue them into oblivion if things went Tango Uniform.
2. OceanGate's investors did not consider what their liability would be if things went Tango Uniform.
The legal proceedings promise to be epic. And yeah, I don't care that the release that their customers signed mentioned the word "death" three times. Doesn't release them from liability for reckless endangerment and misrepresentation.
UPDATE 23 JUNE 2023 19:42: Big Country gets an honorable mention with this one:
He has more, so get over there. He's of a similar mind of the legal predicament that OceanGate is in.
UPDATE 23 JUNE2024 20:04: Miguel has an important pro-tip.
10 comments:
The company probably doesn't have any money and the assets are probably other shitty subs, so worthless.
If they have insurance it's capped so they aren't getting a lot.
Then there's maritime law, and if the company is very lucky, them could get the settlement down to the value of the lost vessel, ie $0.
With the Death on High Seas act, they can only sue for lost future wages of the deceased.
Of course a lot of this can get tossed if negligence or gross negligence is shown.
It's a mess.
A: I don't care what kind of waiver they signed, they be fucked
B: Can't imagine the insurance for such a fiasco
With wealth, there's a tremendous amount of responsibility to those that depend on the wealth for their lives. That's the biggest problem I have with the endeavor. Responsibility means sacrificing whims for the good of those that depend on you. Regardless of the outcome, the biggest sufferers will be those that are not immediate family, or have the immediate resources to change their lives.
We are about to find out the validity of "waivers" in a courtroom.
As a juror hearing such a lawsuit I would probably be inclined to
allow the waivers to stand and not award any money to the families
of the victims. There are very few acts carrying as much inherent
danger as diving to depths of over 12,000 feet and the risk of death
for doing so is quite substantial. Nobody forced these people to
engage in this activity and indeed...they paid a decent sum of money
to do so. The outcomes of the inevitable legal wrangling will be
interesting and will likely set some legal precedents.
@Ratus,
Future wages of the deceased? IIRC, one of them was a multi-millionaire!
Lawyers are lined up from here to Delhi for the contingency fee on that one alone.
@Borepatch,
You're welcome.
Sometimes, the jokes just write themselves.
Today, I was digging up the pics and posting the captions as fast as I thought of them.
And while I understand how Peter feels at BRM, there is no ghoulishness going on. No one's mocking the dead for being dead (other than the pilot/CEO).
They're mocking an incompetent corporate enterprise for needlessly, negligently, and callously killing them.
Yuuuuge difference, and well within fair bounds.
So they will breach the corporate veil and hold the reamining executives personally responsible? Not likely but they can have fun trying.
I need a link to Big Country.
My thoughts (now that the coffee is kicking in) are: so what?
Liabilities, waivers, financial exposures, insurance, so what?
Nobody's going to get rich off this ACCIDENT, not even the hungriest of lawyers. And while I'm not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV,) I see the real legal battles coming in the families and businesses when wills are read and corporate successions are determined. Basically, who gets what's left of the lives of those who perished.
The biggest winners? All the other businesses who offer this sort of diversion who didn't lose a boatload of customers. They now have the chance to step back, review their own operations and equipment, and decide whether to go on or get out.
The disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor am I offering legal advice. The vehicle those people were in was, as I understand it, 'an experimental submersible' thus the mechanical equivalent of certain medical material presently available to the population. Lots of luck with legal claims.
@Murphy,
It's tough to sell this as an "accident" when they deliberately ignored the safety concerns of everyone with a pulse, and then fired their chief engineer for raising them as well.
It's not an "accident" when you go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
It's only an accident folks who do that occasionally survive.
This was a "To Hell With Science, I Want Money!" expedition.
Absent full disclosure of that recklessness, the company and its board are toast, however long it takes. The last thing their lawyers would want is for this to ever get in front of a jury, and 3:1 odds the board would be criminally prosecuted as well, in multiple countries.
People with any stake in OceanGate are going to be fleeing this hot potato faster than folks hiding from Epstein's client list.
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