Washington Company at Center of Submarine Tragedy

Over the past few days, the media has been intensively covering the story of the custom submarine commissioned to explore the wreckage of the Titanic that went missing. Named “the Titan,” the craft was designed to withstand tremendous pressures at extreme depths to survive an exploration of the Titanic.

The controversial outfit behind the excursion is a company called OceanGate, an Everett based company that custom fabricated the craft for deep sea diving.

Due to the extremely niche market for these kinds of crafts, OceanGate has been able to operate with virtually zero regulatory oversight. Indeed, the company boasts of this fact on their website.

Per a NY Times article, in 2018 employees within the company warned of the need for additional testing, and stated that there were very real dangers to passengers on the Titan. Two months later, experts warned OceanGate’s CEO in a letter that the Titanic was in potentially grave danger by skipping traditional assessment of the craft’s suitability and safety.

OceanGate has been spending the last few days in damage control, trying to counter the mounting evidence that their lax approach to safety and regulation will likely cause the death of all passengers and crew aboard the craft. In Court filings seeking permission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, they touted their partnership with the University of Washington Applied Physics lab. The University responded by saying they only worked on shallow water applications of the vessels.

I could go on and on and on about the misleading and terrible representations made by this company. Unfortunately, they are just part of a larger trend as “disruptor” companies push the envelope on safety and gamble with human lives. From this submarine, to Boeing’s 737 Max, to Tesla’s self-driving technology, too many companies are placing flashy new tech ahead of human lives.

Unlike with Tesla and Boeing, OceanGate is a much smaller company. Given the types of damages available in Washington for these kinds of acts, it is likely they will exhaust all their resources and insurance paying out damages. Unfortunately, it is virtually certain all aboard perished. All of the paying passengers paid around 250,000 for this excursion, and it is being widely reported that some of the passengers were billionaires. In addition to pre-death pain and suffering, the heirs can recover for loss of future income, and their own emotional distress damages from having their relationships severed. It is also unfortunately likely that the families will be fighting over insufficient resources to cover the damages.

However, maybe the destruction of this company by families suing them after the fact will send a message to other companies. If you’re Boeing and Tesla, you can afford to throw money after injuries and deaths from poor safety practices. If you’re a smaller company, putting your customers’ lives at risks  by cutting corners could not only result in their deaths, but your company’s ruin as well.

Anthony Marsh is a Principal Attorney at Herrmann Law Group specializing in mass torts, wrongful death, and insurance bad faith.