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Owner of Dive Boat Where 34 Died Seeks to Head Off Lawsuits

Associated Press

   LOS ANGELES - The owners of the dive boat where 34 people perished in a
   fire off Southern California filed a lawsuit Thursday to head off
   potentially costly litigation, a move condemned by some observers as
   disrespectful to the families of the dead.
   Truth Aquatics Inc., which owned the Conception, filed the action in
   U.S. District Court in Los Angeles under a pre-Civil War provision of
   maritime law that allows it to limit its liability.
   Investigators are still searching for what caused the blaze that
   wrecked the boat, which remains upside down at the bottom of the sea
   near the Channel Islands.
   The time-tested legal maneuver has been successfully employed by owners
   of the Titanic and countless other crafts--some as small aspersonal
   watercraft --and was widely anticipated by maritime law experts. Still,
   the fact it was filed just three days after the deadly inferno
   Mondaysurprisedlegal observers.

   Limited time to act
   Families of the deceased, who are not named in the complaint, will be
   served with notice that they have a limited time to challenge the
   company's effort to clear itself of negligence or limit its liability
   to the value of the remains of the boat, which is a total loss.
   ``They're forcing these people to bring their claims and bring them
   now,'' said attorney Charles Naylor, who represents victims in maritime
   law cases. ``They have six months to do this. They could let these
   people bury their kids. This is shocking.''
   Professor Martin J. Davies, the maritime law director at Tulane
   University, said the cases always follow accidents at sea and always
   look bad, but they are usually initiated by insurance companies to
   limit losses.
   ``It seems like a pretty heartless thing to do, but that's what always
   happens. They're just protecting their position,'' Davies said. ``It
   produces very unpleasant results in dramatic cases like this one. ...
   The optics are awful.''
   The U.S. law dates to 1851, but it has its origins in 18th-century
   England, Davies said. It was designed to encourage the shipping
   business. Every country with a shipping industry has something similar
   onitsbooks.
   In order to prevail, the company and owners Glen and Dana
   Fritzlermustshow they were not at fault in the disaster.
   They asserted in the lawsuit that they ``used reasonable care to make
   the Conception seaworthy, and she was, at all relevant times, tight,
   staunch and strong, fully and properly manned, equipped and supplied
   and in all respects seaworthy and fit for the service in which she was
   engaged.''

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