Debris from the Titan submarine recovered from the ocean floor is unloaded from the Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on June 28, 2023.
Paul Daly/The Canadian Press via AP
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Paul Daly/The Canadian Press via AP
The family of a French explorer killed in a submarine explosion has filed a lawsuit seeking more than $50 million in damages, saying the crew suffered “horror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the submarine’s operator of gross negligence.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet was one of five people killed when the Titan submarine exploded during a trip to the famous Titanic sinking site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip on the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a now-defunct Washington state company.
Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit. He was considered one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about the famous shipwreck. Attorneys representing his estate said in an emailed statement that the “fated submarine” had a “troubled history” and that OceanGate had failed to disclose key information about the ship and its durability.
According to the lawsuit, the Titan “dropped its weight” about 90 minutes into the dive, suggesting the team aborted or attempted to abort the dive.
“While the exact cause of the accident may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan crew must have realized exactly what was happening,” the lawsuit states. “The crew would have known, in good faith, that they were going to die before they died.”
The lawsuit continues: “The crew would have heard the creaking of carbon fiber growing louder as the weight of the water pressed down on the Titan’s hull. The crew would have lost communications and perhaps electricity. According to expert calculations, they would have continued to descend, with full knowledge of the ship’s irreparable damage, experiencing terror and mental anguish before the Titan finally exploded.”
An OceanGate spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in King County, Washington. The defendants must respond to the complaint in the coming weeks, court papers say. The lawsuit describes Nargeolet as an OceanGate employee and crew member aboard the Titan.
The lawsuit also criticized Titan’s “modern, state-of-the-art wireless electronics system, claiming that none of the controls, knobs, or gauges would function without a constant power source and wireless signal.”
Although OceanGate designated Nargeolet as a member of the crew, “many details of the vessel’s flaws and defects were not disclosed and were intentionally concealed,” attorneys at the Buzbee Law Firm in Houston, Texas, said in their statement.
Tony Buzbee, one of the attorneys on the case, said one of the goals of the lawsuit is to “get answers for the family about exactly how this happened, who was involved and how those involved could have allowed this to happen.”
Concerns have been raised in the aftermath of the disaster over whether Titan was doomed due to its unconventional design and its creators’ refusal to submit to industry-standard independent testing. Its demise has also raised questions about the viability and future of private deep-sea exploration.
The US Coast Guard quickly convened a high-level investigation, which is still ongoing. A key public hearing as part of the investigation is scheduled for September.
Titan made its final dive on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning, and lost contact with its support vessel about two hours later. After a search and rescue mission that attracted worldwide attention, the wreckage of Titan was found on the ocean floor, about 984 feet (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush was operating the Titan when it exploded. The lawsuit describes Rush as “an eccentric and self-proclaimed ‘innovator’ in the deep-sea diving industry” and names his estate as one of the defendants.
In addition to Rush and Nargeolet, the explosion also killed British explorer Hamish Harding and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.
The company that owns the rights to salvage the Titanic is making its first trip to the wreck site in years. Last month, RMS Titanic Inc., a Georgia-based company, launched its first expedition to the site since 2010 from Providence, Rhode Island.
Nargeolet was director of underwater research for RMS Titanic. He was part of an expedition that visited the Titanic site in 1987, shortly after its location was discovered, and oversaw the recovery of numerous Titanic artifacts, according to the lawsuit. Lawyers for his estate described him as a seasoned veteran of underwater exploration who would not have participated in the Titan expedition if the company had been more transparent.
The lawsuit blames the collapse on the “persistent carelessness, recklessness and negligence” of Oceangate, Rush and others.
“The deceased Nargeolet may have died doing what he loved, but his death — and the deaths of the other Titan crew members — were wrong,” the lawsuit states.
