Lawsuits settled in Wave Dancer tragedy
It was the biggest maritime disaster in the history of Belize. Twenty people lost their lives when the motor vessel Wave Dancer capsized after it broke loose from its mooring in Big Creek at the height of Hurricane Iris. This week the families of those victims, eighteen U.S. citizens and two Belizeans, experienced at least some closure as the lawsuit against Wave Dancer’s owners was finally settled out of court. The amount received by each of the families varies according to factors like age and number of dependents, and under the terms of the settlement the individual amounts cannot be disclosed. The total, however, is limited to the size of the Wave Dancer’s insurance policy: five million U.S. dollars. That means, after the law firm takes its third, the average payout comes to around one hundred and eighty-five thousand U.S. dollars, a sum that is certainly better than nothing, but hardly approaches the value of a human life. The two Belizeans who died in the disaster, Eloisa Johnson and Brenda Wade, were crewmembers of the vessel, which carried SCUBA divers from Belize City to the barrier reef and atolls on a weekly basis. Since the sinking of Wave Dancer another boat owned by the same company, Sun Dancer, continues to operate in Belizean waters.
One man who is glad to see the case settled is Angelo Mouzouropoulos, head of IMMARBE, Belize’s International Marine Registry. Mouzouropoulos has been stymied in his official investigation of the sinking because the three Americans who survived the tragedy have refused to give statements until the lawsuit was concluded. With these key statements expected shortly, IMMARBE’s report will be allowed to proceed and eventually made public. Already a set of interim recommendations has been sent to NEMO in an effort to establish clear procedures for boats to follow when a hurricane approaches and hopefully avoid a repetition of the Wave Dancer disaster. The vessel, although American owned, was registered under the Belizean flag.
In related news, a landmark ruling by a U.S. court has made it much easier for foreign crewmembers of American owned ships to receive justice in the event of wrongdoing by their employers. The case, decided by the eleventh circuit court, involved a lawsuit brought by families of crewmembers aboard the ill-fated Fantome, another Belize based dive boat that sank off Roatan during Hurricane Mitch. The Miami based owners of Fantome maintained that the plaintiffs, citizens of eleven different countries, including Belize, could not sue in a U.S. court because the ship was not U.S. flagged and did not operate in U.S. waters. The judge did not buy that argument, however, and ruled that since the Fantome was in fact controlled by U.S. based interests, a Miami venue was entirely proper. The decision will hasten a trial or out of court settlement of the case, which has now been pending for over four years. It also may signal a greater responsibility for the owners of foreign flagged U.S. owned cruise ships who routinely minimize their liability for injuries or deaths of crew members by claiming to be outside the reach of American justice.
