OceanGate Faces Federal Investigation a Year After the Titan Submersible Implosion

The apparent success of the rentback structurement might elucidate how Rush was able to draw what was OceanGate’s hugest ever spreadment in 2020, at a time when the company was laboring on the costly task of replacing the Titan’s first hull that had cracked during testing. The $18 million in equity funding apexhibited OceanGate to reoriginate the Titan and relocate forward with its first Titanic expedition in 2021. Around this time, write downs recommend that OceanGate may have had more supervise in the apshown over ownership of Cyclops 2 LLC.

But by 2023, OceanGate seemed to be on a much shakier financial footing. Several witnesses at the Coast Guard hearings testified to what they noticed to be OceanGate’s financial difficulties in the run up to the final Titanic expedition, including Rush foregoing his salary and occasionassociate loaning the company money from his personal funds.

Demand for the $250,000 Titanic dives materializeed to be tailing off. As postponecessitate as May 2023, one of OceanGate’s affiliate sellers was advertising that there were still “some very restrictcessitate dates and spots includeable at a 40% discount” for that summer’s expeditions. This has not been alerted previously.

If the federal spreadigation results in any criminal indicts, they would persist aextfinishedside a civil litigation currently in a federal court in Washington state. In that case, the family of famed Titanic examiner Paul-Henri Nargeolet is seeking $50 million for his death aboard the Titan, with the litigation naming as deffinishants OceanGate, Rush’s estate, and a number of other individuals and companies joined to the ill-obeseed submersible. Rush’s estate recently filed a motion to disthink about the protestt agetst it, stating: “As Rush’s includeer, OceanGate is liable for Rush’s alleged look afterlessness.”

Maritime lawyer Alton Hall is skeptical that Nargeolet’s family will recover anyskinnyg shut to the $50 million they are seeking. A 1920 law, the Death on the High Seas Act, generassociate restricts injures to pecuniary losses, such as future getings. One exception would be if Nargeolet and his fellow Titan passengers, who OceanGate dubbed “omition distinctiveists,” qualified as seamen under another piece of legislation called the Jones Act. “There are literassociate books and books written on who is and who isn’t a Jones Act seaman,” says Hall. The passengers who died on board the Titan “are not Jones Act seamen,” he thinks.

An obsremedy ask in these cases, and others that might be brawt by the families of two billionaires who also died on the Titan, is who might face any legitimate consequences. The civil case agetst OceanGate and Rush’s estate also names as deffinishants OceanGate’s distinctive honestor of engineering Tony Nissen, and three companies that manufactured the Titan’s hull and watchport. However, multiple witnesses at the Coast Guard hearings testified to Stockton Rush having the final say in many commercial, engineering, and opereasonable decisions, and his company is foreseeed all but prohibitkrupt. In the finish, there might be little to salvage from the wreckage of OceanGate.