Posted on 06/22/2023 8:44:02 PM PDT by xxqqzz
Waiting for the usual liberal chattering heads to compare him to Elon Musk...
1. The defendant in the case would be OceanGate, not the CEO. Piercing the shield of corporate protection to get to an individual’s assets is probably more difficult to do in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
2. How would a U.S. court have any jurisdiction anyway? From what I can tell, the passengers included one guy from Scotland, one from France, and a Pakistani-born guy and his son (one or both of them might be British citizens). The mission departed from Newfoundland, Canada. And you can’t just go shopping for the “right” court to take the case here in the U.S. even if you could establish a basis for pursuing this in a U.S. court. Civil liability for personal injury and other torts is adjudicated in state courts here, not the Federal court system. So a lawsuit against OceanGate over an incident like this would have to be filed in the state where the company is incorporated.
Fair points, I haven’t practiced law for many years.
But I’m convinced that there will be lawsuits, as that pile of gold is simply too much to ignore and there will be the temptation of his family to ‘make it go away’ and they can easily afford a decent payout for that purpose.
Lawyers might look at this a 5 or 10% chance at a multi-million dollar payday, so it certainly beats the lottery or Vegas.
One other defense they could use is that the CEO was piloting the sub, so that would imply he considered it safe, (even if he ignored every expert in the field).
Now it's his epitaph.
Then, on the other hand you have this:
“Doomed Titanic sub CEO tried to sell cut-price tickets saying it was ‘safer than crossing the street’”
Which is a safety claim by the CEO...I do think that would be very powerful to a jury, particularly a Blue jury (at whatever jurisdictions the cases are filed in).
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4162917/posts
It was mentioned several times early on the Titan was not required to pass safety regs or inspections by the US or eve Canada.
Amazing to think Anyone would go on it.
But every single one of those tourists signed some waiver knowing they could die.
I agree with your post.
Contract law is often stomped on by the courts even with rock solid contracts.
Their argument would be that the details of the risk were not fully disclosed.
It is not enough to say “you may die” in the contract. The courts would probably require a detailed engineering report (by the guy who was fired!) be an attachment to the contract.
The jurisdiction issue is tougher—but good litigators could probably talk their way past that one as well.
Because no one who’s ever signed a waiver and release of liability ever subsequently sued anyway for gross negligence, recklessness, willful misconduct etc
And thank gaia no old white men worked on the project.
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