"Cigarette companies were telling people for years, ‘oh, this is okay, there really aren't any dangers,’" he said, adding that he believes cigarette company executives were putting their customers at risk but not themselves. He pointed out that OceanGate founder Stockton Rush perished on the submersible.
Inset, from left: Suleman Dawood, Shahzada Dawood, Stockton Rush; Paul-Henry Nargeolet and Hamish Harding are aboard the OceanGate Titan submersible.Daynard pointed out that the trip came with risks and that the situation could not be compared to a regular trip such as a cruise or modern-day airplane flight. Instead, he compared it to if the Wright brothers took on tourists in the experimental phase of testing aircraft.
"Lawyers don't bring lawsuits unless they think there's a chance if you win the lawsuit of actually collecting the damages," he said.