More about the “Duck Boats"
"Family members of victims from Branson duck boat disaster reach settlement" reads the headline in the Kansas City Star…. As if tragedies like this can ever be “settled.”
Relatives of Ervin and Horace Coleman, brothers who were among the 17 people who died last year when a duck boat sank on Table Rock Lake, have reached a settlement with the operator of the Ride the Ducks business in Branson.
Lawyers for the Colemans last week filed a notice of settlement with Ripley Entertainment. The settlement follows a mediation session that occurred in January.
Ernesto Sigmon, a Dallas attorney for the relatives of Ervin and Horace Coleman, could not discuss the settlement.
“The actual terms of it are under seal,” he said….
Ripley Entertainment, which bought the Ride the Ducks business in Branson late in 2017, is accused of ignoring warnings of severe weather the evening of July 19, 2016. A storm with winds exceeding 70 miles per hour battered a duck boat with 31 people on board before it sank in Table Rock Lake.
The duck boat industry for years has been criticized for not making safety improvements that were recommended following a 1999 duck boat catastrophe that killed 13 people in Arkansas.
In addition to the lawsuits, the captain of the sunken duck boat, Kenneth Scott McKee, faces a federal criminal charge of admiralty misconduct. He has pleaded not guilty.
None of the videos show the moment that free surface overwhelmed the stability of the sunken duck boat; I can understand why they might have cut that part out. We’re left to guess at the progressive nature of the flooding, but it appears that the boat operator was heading parallel to the trough, exposing the port beam (lined with open windows) to breaking waves. Not good! We’ll have to wait for the NTSB final report for those kind of details.
Independent lawyers are the only ones that can ever reach a true settlement in cases like this; not so for grieving family members, or anyone else for that matter.
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