The family of a French explorer who was aboard the Titan submersible, the vessel that imploded last year during its failed mission to explore the Titanic wreckage, killing all five people aboard, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the craft’s manufacturer, OceanGate Expeditions.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer whose deep knowledge of the sunken ship earned him the nickname “Mr Titanic”, was hired to assist OceanGate, a Washington state-based ocean exploration company, during the Titan’s journey to the Titanic.

But the company and its founder, Richard Stockton Rush III, who also died aboard the vessel, misled Nargeolet about how the submersible was built, according to the lawsuit filed in King County, Washington.

“Mr Rush confessed to a ‘mission specialist’ on one Titanic voyage that he had ‘gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes’,” according to the lawsuit, which the Houston-based law firms Buzbee Law Firm and Schecter, Shaffer & Harris said was filed Tuesday.

The lawsuit also accuses Rush of negligence for a variety of reasons, including falsely advertising a “crackling noise” that was said to be an advanced “safety” feature to alert crew members when to abort a mission. In reality, the lawsuit says that sound “is nothing more than the detection of a possibly imminent failure of the carbon fiber hull.”

The suit, which the firms said was the first to be filed against OceanGate over the implosion, is seeking more than US$50mil.

Representatives for OceanGate, Rush’s widow and the other four plaintiffs - one employee of OceanGate and four businesses that the lawsuit says assisted in manufacturing the submersible - did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.

OceanGate Expeditions said on its website that it “has suspended all exploration and commercial operations.”

Nargeolet’s family could not be reached.

On June 18, 2023, roughly 90 minutes after the submersible and its five crew members began descending into the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean where the wreck of the Titanic rests on the sea floor, the submersible dropped its weights “indicating that the team had aborted” the journey, the lawsuit says.

Investigators said the vessel’s carbon fiber and titanium body imploded under the immense pressure of the ocean as it dived. Exactly how the vessel imploded has yet to be determined. Hamish Harding, Suleman Dawood and his father, Shahzada Dawood, also died.

Since the tragedy, deep sea explorers have been pushing for greater international regulation to bar another disaster. They want to close the gap that OceanGate exploited in eschewing the voluntary safety certifications the industry uses to reduce the substantial risks for deep divers.

For years, starting in 2018, Rush brushed aside warnings that the sub’s maverick design was destined to fail.

Before entering the Titan submersible, crew members had to sign a waiver acknowledging that they could die during the exploration. But the lawsuit says that the release was “insufficient” and did not disclose all of the risks of the submersible.

The lawsuit has calculated millions of dollars in damages from the emotional and financial damages that Nargeolet’s death caused his family and his suffering before his death.

“Common sense dictates that the crew were well aware they were going to die, before dying,” the lawsuit says.

“We are hopeful that through this lawsuit we can get answers for the family as to exactly how this happened, who all were involved, and how those involved could allow this to happen,” Tony Buzbee, one of the lawyers bringing the case, said in a statement.

 - NY Times