$100 million lawsuit filed against El Faro owners

The family of one of the crew members on board the El Faro when it sank in Hurricane Joaquin has filed a lawsuit against the ship’s owner.

“We’re here to send a message to those in the corporate world that place more emphasis on making profits than saving lives”, Willie E. Gary, an attorney representing the family of Lonnie Jordan, said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. Gary says the ship was too old and should not have been sailing.

Gary told Reuters he would be seeking the ship maintenance records and had heard that it was undergoing mechanical repairs the day it departed as well as having other problems within weeks of the doomed trip.

The suit alleges that TOTE was warned prior to El Faro’s leaving Jacksonville, Florida, for San Juan, Puerto Rico, in late September that there was a tropical storm in the Atlantic “intensifying to hurricane strength”.

Tote has said Capt. Michael Davidson had a “sound plan” to avoid Hurricane Joaquin, a strategy that only unraveled when the ship’s main propulsion stopped working.

The ship disappeared with 33 crewmembers off the Bahamas in late August.

The U.S. Coast Guard called off a search and rescue mission last week after finding only one body amid debris from the ship.

Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, Air National Guard and tugboat crews searched more than 183,000 square nautical miles off the Bahamian coast in a joint effort to locate the “El Faro” crew.

Thirty-three members were on board “El Faro” when it went missing earlier this month.

The report also underscores the importance of the recovery of the vessel’s voyage data recorder, which investigators have said will help fill in the blanks on exactly what happened on board the ship before it sank. “But we’re going to change things and that’s what big business understands is when you hit them in their pockets”, Gary told reporters.