An explosive lawsuit details the “terror and anguish” likely faced by those aboard the ill-fated Titan submersible in its final, horrific moments before the vessel imploded in June 2023.
The $50 million lawsuit says the “doomed” submersible had a “troubled history” and claims OceanGate and its now-deceased CEO Stockton Rush failed to disclose key facts about the vessel and its durability before French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and three others dived on June 18, 2023.
Both the company and Rush are alleged to have been negligent in building the submersible, even as they advertised the chance to “become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes” for $250,000 a ticket.
Those failures led the Titan to drop weights just 90 minutes into its journey, indicating the team had aborted or attempted to abort its dive.
A $50 million negligence lawsuit has been filed against OceanGate and its now-deceased CEO Stockton Rush.
The lawsuit details the “terror and anguish” likely faced by those aboard the ill-fated Titan submersible in its final, horrific moments before the ship imploded in June 2023.
“While the exact cause of the failure may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan’s crew would have been aware of what was happening,” says the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in King County, Washington, by Nargeolet’s family.
“Common sense dictates that the crew was well aware that they were going to die, before they died,” he continues.
‘The crew may have heard the creaking of carbon fiber growing louder as the weight of the water pressed against the Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well.
According to experts’ calculations, they would have continued descending, fully aware of the ship’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish before the Titan finally imploded.
It was brought back by the family of 77-year-old French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who died in the tragedy in June 2023.
Also on board the ship were British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood and their son Suleman, who was just 19.
The lawsuit goes on to criticize the Titan’s “modern, state-of-the-art wireless electronic system” and claims that “none of the controllers, controls or gauges would function without a constant power source and wireless signal.”
It also labels Rush, who operated the boat on the fateful voyage, as “an eccentric and self-proclaimed ‘innovator’ in the deep-sea diving industry,” and names his estate as one of the defendants.
Following the disaster, both OceanGate and Rush faced criticism over the vessel’s flawed design.
In an interview with CBS News months earlier, Rush admitted: “We run everything with this game controller.”
When asked by journalist David Pogue: “It looks like there’s some MacGyvery elements to this submersible, some botched work. I mean, you’re putting construction pipes in there as ballast.”
But Rush responded: “I don’t know if I would use that description, but there are certain things that need to be understood.”
“So the pressure vessel is not at all a MacGyver creation, because that’s where we work with Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else could fail. Thrusters can fail, lights can fail, but you’re still going to be safe.”
However, Rush failed to mention that a group of trained professionals had warned in 2018 that OceanGate’s experimental approach to submersible design could lead to potentially “catastrophic” results.
He had refused to obtain third-party certification that the Titan was safe at the time and repeatedly ignored warnings that his vessel was a death trap that would “kill someone,” describing them as a “serious personal insult.”
Following the disaster, both OceanGate and Rush faced criticism over the narrow vessel’s flawed design.
But the new suit claims that Nargeolet – who had been hired to provide commentary on the Titanic and had already completed 37 dives at the wreck site – was never informed of “many of the details about the ship’s defects and deficiencies.”
He says such matters were “deliberately kept secret” from him and apparently from others on board, including Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and British billionaire Hamish Harding.
Had those issues been disclosed, Nargeolet would not have taken part in the voyage that set out around 8 a.m. on June 18 in the Atlantic Ocean, above the site of the Titanic wreck, her lawyers argue.
The Titan took off in the Atlantic Ocean on June 18 and lost communication just 90 minutes later.
At 9:45 a.m., the ship lost all contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince.
However, it took OceanGate Expeditions eight hours to inform the US Coast Guard about the submarine’s disappearance after losing contact.
This led to a massive international response to rescue the five passengers. Ships from around the world began making the journey to help search for the missing submarine as the hours and estimated oxygen ran out.
It was also revealed that a US Navy monitoring system picked up a possible sound of the vessel imploding during descent, but search efforts continued.
Finally, after a frantic four-day search, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) tragically discovered the wreck of the Titan, about 1,600 feet off the Titanic’s bow.
All five men on board were killed instantly when the Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” authorities said.
After a frantic four-day search, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) tragically discovered the wreck of the Titan, about 1,600 feet off the Titanic’s bow.
The lawsuit now blames the implosion on OceanGate and Rush’s “persistent negligence, recklessness and carelessness.”
“The late Nargeolet may have died doing what he loved to do, but his death – and that of the other members of the Titan crew – was unjust,” he said.
Attorney Tony Buzbee of the Buzbee Law Firm in Houston, Texas, who represents Nargeolet’s family, saying He hopes the lawsuit “will get answers for the family about how exactly this happened, who was involved, and how those involved could allow this to happen.”
He added that he thinks it is “telling that while the University of Washington and Boeing played key roles in the design of earlier, but smaller, versions of the Titan, both have recently denied any involvement in the submersible model that imploded.”
Several different theories have been put forward as to what may have caused Titan to implode.
Several different theories have been put forward as to what may have caused the implosion.
In a paper published in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), lead researcher and professor of civil and environmental engineering Roberto Ballarini suggested that imperfections in the carbon fiber used to build the Titan submarine’s hull could be to blame for the devastating implosion.
He further suggested that any damage that had accumulated during the ship’s previous dives could have made it vulnerable to “microbuckling.”
“The simplest explanation is that you take a long piece of spaghetti and you press it with two fingers. What will happen? Basically, it will bend, it will break,” Ballarini explained.
“That’s what’s called buckling. It’s when you compress something and it deforms by a significant amount because it’s an instability.”
The researchers were unable to examine whether microbending was the cause of Titan’s failure, but they did analyze ships of similar shapes and materials.
Other experts have blamed the helmet’s carbon fiber composite material.
Small imperfections that might otherwise go unnoticed put ships like the Titan at risk of collapsing under intense pressure.
Now that the ship has completely imploded, investigators will likely never be able to pinpoint the exact location of the fault that caused the tragic event.
Still, the U.S. Coast Guard continues to investigate the tragedy.
“We are working closely with our domestic and international partners to ensure a full understanding of the incident,” board chairman Jason Neubauer said in a statement in June.
A key public hearing is scheduled for September.
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