Surviving family of Titanic submersible explorer files wrongful death suit for $50 million

The family of French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet has filed a wrongful death suit totaling $50 million after the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate Titan explorer submersible.

77-year-old Nargeolet was one of the five onboard the Titan submersible which imploded while descending to explore the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023. All five present died instantly.

The family of the French mariner have accused OceanGate, the owner of the doomed vessel, of "persistent carelessness, recklessness and negligence."

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The suit, filed in Washington state on Tuesday, also alleges that OceanGate failed to disclose important information about the durability and history of the Titan submersible.

The U.S. Coast Guard is still actively investigating the implosion, saying in June 2024 that the inquiry "will take longer than initially projected to complete." 

"The lawsuit further alleges that even though Nargeolet had been designated by OceanGate to be a member of the crew of the vessel, many of the particulars about the vessel’s flaws and shortcomings were not disclosed and were purposely concealed," lawyers for the Nargeolet family said in a statement to the New York Post.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet served as the director of underwater exploration for the RMS Titanic, and allegedly would never have agreed to join the OceanGate Titan expedition if the company had been more transparent about the vessel, according to his family.

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"Decedent Nargeolet may have died doing what he loved to do, but his death — and the deaths of the other Titan crew members — was wrongful," the family alleges in the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for OceanGate declined comment on the lawsuit when asked by the Associated Press.

The ill-fated Titan submersible expedition on June 18, 2023, took the lives of Nargeolet as well as four others: Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, and father-and-son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) Chair Jason Neubaue announced in June 2024 that "The MBI is committed to ensuring that we fully understand the factors that led to this tragedy in order to prevent similar occurrences in the future."

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OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush operated the Titan submersible during the doomed exploration voyage.