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Comment by shiroiushi | Hacker News Reader

I just saw a news headline that the estate of the oceanographer who died on the Titan is suing the company for $50M. How exactly is this possible? Who are they suing? I didn't think there even was an OceanGate company in existence any more: their founder is dead, and no one in their right mind would ride on one of their subs any more, so what assets do they even have to sue for? They weren't some big tech company with billions in assets; they were some crappy little start-up trying to build a business by selling cheap submersible rides to rich people, and from what I remember, didn't exactly have solid financials at the time and certainly no extra money in the bank to sue for. And IIRC the business didn't have any kind of liability insurance, so what is the point of a big wrongful-death lawsuit against a defunct company with no assets?

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OceanGate is probably still a going concern on paper. They no doubt have premises, equipment, other assets, creditors, cash in the bank and so on.

This lawsuit is probably an attempt to get a seat at the liquidation table if nothing else. They will probably not get 50M out, but I don't think that's the point.

Also keep in mind that this is the /estate/ that's suing, so there is a no doubt a lawyer somewhere in the mix that saw an opportunity to increase their executor fees and make bank.

In the US you can sue anybody for anything. If its not completely and absolutely spurios it will get at least a hearing.

Of course, you can hire a lawyer and sue anybody for anything. But hiring that lawyer and filing court motions costs money, so there's no point if the entity you're suing has no money. That's why I was curious, but according to other posts here, it does seem there might be at least some money to go after.

if you ask for less than a court battle would cost you can just ask for slightly less than what that would cost the other party. In the US each party pays their own cost generally.

Perhaps the employees. Anybody working on it knew there wasn’t enough testing, so they could be held personally liable.

The employees are the ones "who labeled [the] experimental submersible unsafe prior to its last, fatal voyage," and are "testify[ing] Tuesday before U.S. Coast Guard investigators" [1].

[1] https://apnews.com/article/titan-submersible-implosion-heari...

Some, yes. Fortunately. Also there was another owner I believe.

Their co-founder isn't dead, i don't know if he would be liable with his own assets in the US.

So, a DEAD person is suing a company, and what you see as a problem with that scenario is that the DEAD person will never see those 50 million because the company, that this DEAD person is sueing, does not have that kind of cash?

The dead person has next of kin, who would see the money if it exists. The signature on the lawsuit is somewhat of a formality.

Insurance.

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