Thibaud Hue, edited by Gauthier Delomez / Photo credits: Jason Redmond / AFP
A company that makes the headlines in spite of itself. The American company OceanGate Expeditions owned the Titan, the submersible aboard which five passengers died trying to reach the wreck of the Titanic. It suffered an implosion on Sunday at a depth of around 2,000 m, far from the 4,000 m required to visit the legendary liner. Several voices had been raised, long before this disastrous expedition, to denounce the negligence in terms of safety.
OceanGate CEO ‘very security conscious’
First five years ago, a company executive was fired after expressing doubts about the safety of the submarine, about its ability to withstand pressure, particularly at the porthole. About forty scientists had also warned of the risks of an experimental, non-approved approach.
Arguments that does not want to hear one of the co-founders of OceanGate, Guillermo Sohnlen, interviewed Friday morning on Times Radio. He claims that Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company who died in the implosion, was taking every precaution. “He was very attentive to safety. He knew how to foresee the danger to perfection and he knew the difficulty of carrying out an operation in the seabed”, he assures, continuing: “I know from experience that we were extremely attached to safety and that risk mitigation was a key part of the company’s culture”.
Impossible to consent to commit an offense on one’s own person
To protect themselves, the company had a waiver signed before the dive. A CBS reporter reports that during a trip last year aboard the Titan, he was able to read this document on which the word “death” is stipulated three times on the first page. According to criminal lawyer Alexandre Lazarègue contacted by Europe 1, this discharge remains insufficient to protect OceanGate against possible legal attacks. “The contract was intended to allow individuals to travel under the sea, to access a site, to visit it and to come back alive,” he explains.
The lawyer adds that “manslaughter, endangering others are criminal offenses and it is absolutely impossible to consent to the commission of an offense on your own person”. “If you have deliberately endangered the lives of others through gross negligence, you can engage your criminal liability. This applies in the Anglo-Saxon world as on the territory of the European Union”, explains Alexandre Lazarègue. For the moment, no one among the families of the victims has filed a lawsuit against the company.