Bz. boatbuilder sued in death of U.S. millionaire
By any measure, it has been a Belizean success story. Departing from the tradition of wooden skiffs, a few enterprising Belizeans, led by the Bradley family, begin to craft small fibreglass boats for local fishermen. The vessels prove popular, the tourism industry booms, and pretty soon boat builders are not only turning out scores of increasingly larger vessels, but begin lucrative exports to the U.S.A. and Caribbean Islands. But tonight that Belizean success story appears to be in jeopardy, at least for one manufacturer, as a civil lawsuit filed in U.S. district court names Denys Bradley Junior of Belize City as a defendant in a wrongful death action. The lawsuit arose out of incident almost a year ago when on December fifteenth, 2002 a Bradley-built 29-foot Wayward boat, like the one seen on your screen, exploded, flinging its three occupants into the water off the north shore of Providenciales, the capital of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Millionaire developer Charles Fraser of Sea Pines, Georgia, drowned in the incident and his wife suffered a fractured spine. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday of last week, is seeking unspecified actual and punitive damages from the boat’s manufacturers and the tour company, J & B Tours Limited, which rented the boat to Fraser. And that’s where the Belize City businessman comes in. News 5 contacted Denys Bradley Junior at his boat yard this afternoon and he informed us that he has had no official notification of the legal action. He said he was notified of last December’s incident and the resulting coroner’s inquest and that his attorney, Dylan Barrow, was instructed to respond on his behalf to queries concerning the case at that time. A check of his files indicates that Bradley sold the ill-fated boat to an associate, Gerald Smith of Bokeelia, Florida about four years ago. Smith is also named as a defendant. How J & B Tours came to be in possession of the boat is not certain, but Bradley says he does not sell any of his vessels directly to J & B Tours. The exploding boat, Bradley says, since it is over four years old, had already outlived the manufacturer’s warranty and he believes the owners may have remodelled the vessel, which led to the catastrophic failure of its fuel tank. Press reports from the Turks and Caicos Islands say that a coroner’s inquest in July concluded that the seventy-three year old Fraser drowned. Testimony during the coroner’s inquest indicated that leaks in the gas tank and an overheated bilge pump on the tour boat combined to set off the explosion. The July inquest ruled Fraser’s death an accident and the jury recommended that no criminal charges be filed. For his part, Bradley is of the opinion that he cannot be held liable for any injury or loss of life for two main reasons: one, all Wayward vessels manufactured at his boat yard meet strict international safety standards, and secondly, the boat in question was being used through a third party arrangement, which he had no knowledge of or control over.
