David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, said in a court filing that he was wrongfully terminated in 2018 for raising concerns about the safety and testing of the Titan. The case was settled out of court, and the terms weren’t disclosed.
Another former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, echoed Lochridge’s concerns. That employee said that as contractors and employees raised red flags, Rush became defensive and dodged questions in staff meetings.
There is also this letter that was penned by the organization that sort of regulates the safety of these things. It’s not like the FAA where they can ground you if you fail to comply, it’s more of a gentlemen’s agreement on what’s safe and acceptable for these things. They called out OceanGate for not adhering to standards, and OceanGate’s response was basically that regulations were/are stifling their innovation.
Which, as they say on Wall Street, works until it doesn’t.
It was interesting to hear that, now that it is all over, the deep sea exploration community had already known by Monday that it had imploded and, of course, they’d all died, the whole idea of a rescue attempt was a complete waste of time and money, and the relatives were given false hope for days.
They’re claiming on reddit that activities like this are a standard exclusion clause on some life insurance policies. Is that correct?
I don’t believe it is. AFAIK, there’s no ‘standard’ clause like that. Exclusion clauses can be added at time of underwriting, but they get added by the underwriter if there’s indication of a specific type of risky activities. They’re not there by default.
That’s 100% the case in Canada, but I’m less familiar with the US market. I’m somewhat familiar though, and have never seen this.
That’s a good question. I don’t have any experience with the super large contracts that very wealthy people might purchase. I can’t remember the ADB riders I used to deal with, but they were small by comparison. I agree that your normal, run of the mill contracts don’t have “standard” exclusions, and sometime u/w adds exclusions. But it has been a while.
Other than “war declared or undeclared”. I think I have seen some excluding death in the commission of a felony. This would need to be a Ben Stiller written policy.
As I think about it I think I’ve seen experimental aircraft specifically excluded, but I’m not sure about submersibles or whether this was considered experimental. If it was, I could see it possibly being excluded. I could also see carriers updating their exclusions to “experimental forms of transportation” or similar.
A contractor didn’t think the view port was what caused the implosion though. (Still pretty damning if it was only rated to 1,000 meters… Titanic is between 3,300 and 3,400 meters.)
David Lochridge, the fired employee / whistleblower, had also voiced concerns over the ring.
