Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Lawsuit filed in water taxi accident

|
|
 
  
Published: May 11, 2004 at 8:58 PM

BALTIMORE, May 11 (UPI) -- A $17 million lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Baltimore against the owner of a water taxi that capsized from a gust of wind in March, killing five passengers.

Three survivors allege negligence and carelessness against the nonprofit Living Classrooms and Baltimore Harbor Shuttle in the legal action.

The Baltimore Sun reported the litigants allege the March 6 accident that capsized the 36-foot pontoon Lady D could have been prevented, had the operators not "wrongfully ordered the vessel to leave Fort McHenry when it was unsafe to do so," and "failed to command the captain to dock the Lady D until conditions were safe."

"This was a predicted storm, not a freak of nature," said Paul Bekman, one of the litigants' lawyers. "All you had to do was look up and see the whole sky was black. That vessel never should have left."

A statement by the defendants said, "We are confident that the court will find that Seaport Taxi, Baltimore Harbor Shuttle and The Living Classrooms Foundation were not responsible for this tragedy and that the sudden and violent weather that day was an act of God."

Topics: Fort McHenry
© 2004 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 20
Singer Janelle Monae arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California
View Caption
Singer Janelle Monae arrives for the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. UPI/Jim Ruymen
fark
Five arrested in prostitution sting. Article lists their names, ages and distance from a church
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...
I'll see your zombie apocalypse, and raise you "swarms of deadly spiders" invading a town in India...