DEMA Working Hard To Pass The Dive Boat Act: Undercurrent 11/2024

DEMA Working Hard To Pass The Dive Boat Act

from the November, 2024 issue of Undercurrent

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The Dive Equipment & Marketing Association (DEMA) is actively supporting a bill before Congress, the "Small Passenger Vessel Liability Fairness Act." The act creates a new class of vessels and removes them from liability protection under an old law.

The old law, the Limitation of Liability Act (1851), was designed to protect American shipping. One of the main sections limited claims to the vessel's value and its cargo, but a sunken boat is of no value beyond what it is insured for. When the Conception burned in 2020, killing 33 divers and a crew member, the law limited the families of the deceased to what their compensation was in maritime disasters. Owner Glenn Fritzer filed a suit to invoke this law, freeing him of any personal obligation to the families other than what they might receive from his $5 million insurance policy, most of which was used to salvage the burned hull. The law's roots go back to when the shipping industry couldn't obtain insurance, and the government needed marine commerce, so the law was to keep owners in business should there be a tragedy with the loss of a sailor's life....

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