The Titanic of Lawsuits

As a boy, Chris Morgan would often leaf through Titanic: An Illustrated History by Don Lynch, fascinated by the tragic shipwreck. It might’ve ended there, except a little film was released: James Cameron’s Titanic, which became one of the biggest box-office hits in movie history.

“That movie, the spectacle of it, was incredible,” says Morgan, an employment litigation defense attorney at Barran Liebman in Portland. “And then the more you get to know about the history, the more fascinating it becomes.”

Getting a J.D. only deepened his interest.

“The legal piece intersects with so much,” Morgan says. “It sinks in the middle of the North Atlantic, but it’s a British ship carrying a lot of American passengers on its way to New York. … Was there negligence in going at full speed into an area of the North Atlantic where you had gotten seven different warnings that day that there was ice in the area? … Why were there not enough lifeboats for everybody? They had 20 on board but the maritime regulations at the time only required 16. And the crew was not trained well enough to know how many people could fit in the lifeboats. At times, they weren’t lowered fast enough, and a lot of the first ones were not close to being full.”

Fingers were pointed on both sides of the Atlantic, congressional inquiries made. Maritime laws were changed, and the owner, White Star Line, wound up in court. “There was a big fight over which law would apply,” Morgan says. “Ultimately, the White Star Line won in limiting their liability, and the payouts were relatively minuscule. The total settlement—literally the total of all of the suits that were filed—was $664,000.”

And if it happened today? “Essentially, it’s an insurance defense type case,” Morgan muses. “I imagine there would be claims against everybody—the manufacturer, the people who built the ship, the White Star Line. There would be claims against individuals who were potentially negligent in not heeding warnings. There would be wrongful death suits. It would be one of the bigger lawsuits ever—if not the biggest.”

For those interested in learning more, Morgan recommends Lynch’s book. “And they just opened one of the traveling artifacts exhibits at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry here in Portland,” he adds. “It’s open through October 18.”