WILMINGTON, UNITED STATES - The company that owns a scuba dive boat that caught fire and sank off California, killing 34 people, has sought to avoid liability by invoking a 19th-century law that has shielded vessel owners from costly disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic.
Truth Aquatics filed a petition in US District Court in Los Angeles under the Shipowner's Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. The law is routinely invoked for an accident on a waterway, whether it involves tugboats and barges in busy harbours or leisure boats at vacation hot spots.The law allows the owner of a vessel to petition a federal court to exonerate it from damages, or limit damages to the post-accident value of the ship.
The ship's owner, White Star Lines, was able to limit its liability in lawsuits in the United States to US$92,000, which was the value of the lifeboats that survived the accident. Circumstances have changed with modern communications, increasing the owner's role in a ship's operation and decreasing the owner's ability to limit liability under the act.
"I think court would look to the competency of the crew, their background, education, what was put on board for firefighting equipment, what training the crew had, what training the passengers had," said Michael Karcher of Karcher, Canning & Karcher, who also teaches at the University of Miami Law School.