Except they all signed waivers, per the article, that they were mission specialists. The nuance was important and the jury is out on whether the implication was fully communicated to the people who paid to join. The article seems to indicate that it was...
IANAL, but I very strongly suspect that a court would rule in favor of OceanGate. I think a court would say "a mission specialist who pays you, and not the other way around, is a passenger"
Calling them anything other than passenger (per the article) was specifically designed to subvert regulations that would have required them to certify the sub. And courts don't like that very much.
If that was the reason then he was probably paying his lawyers $15 an hour too.
You can waive risks, but not a certainty of death. If it was inevitable that the sub would implode at some point because it was so poorly constructed, and Stockton Rush was just playing a very elaborate game of Russian roulette with his customers, then the waiver isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
The other problem is that I’m fairly sure that OceanGate didn’t disclose everything they knew, which would also invalidate the waiver.
For example, David Pogue signed the waiver and went down in it (albeit not very far). He seems like a fairly sensible person with a family who doesn’t have a death wish, did they really disclose to him about the window not being rated for the depth, the whistleblower lawsuit, the letter in 2018 to OceanGate warning them to stop development, etc?
A waiver built on lies is worse than useless, far from getting them out of legal peril it proves that they knew that death was a real possibility.
Except they all signed waivers, per the article, that they were mission specialists. The nuance was important and the jury is out on whether the implication was fully communicated to the people who paid to join. The article seems to indicate that it was...