Philly firm files $100M lawsuit in fatal Missouri duck boat sinking
BRANSON MO NEWS: A Center City law firm that had represented the families of three victims killed in duck boat accidents in Philadelphia has filed a federal lawsuit in Kansas City, Mo., on behalf of the estates of two of the 17 people who died after a Ride the Ducks boat sank in a Missouri lake this month.
The firm of Saltz, Mongeluzzi, Barrett & Bendesky filed the suit Sunday, seeking more than $100 million in damages and alleging that the Missouri tragedy was predictable and preventable, and that the defendants placed profit over greed.
Robert Mongeluzzi, who announced the lawsuit Monday in Kansas City, said in a telephone interview that “the most outrageous part of this” is that Florida-based Ripley Entertainment, which bought the duck boat operation in Branson, Mo., in December 2017, knew of the dangers of an impending severe thunderstorm but didn’t want to cancel the tour and give ticket refunds to the 29 passengers on the boat that later sank.
The amphibious vehicle tour was to first include a tour through the streets of Branson, followed by the lake tour, but the company changed the schedule and “put the water portion first — an admission they were trying to beat the weather,” Mongeluzzi said. “The only explanation is they didn’t want to refund them $40.”
The July 19 sinking in Table Rock Lake in Branson was the worst duck-boat disaster in U.S. history, attorneys said in a news release Monday.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the estates of Ervin Coleman, 76, and his great-nephew Maxwell Coleman Ly, 2, two of the nine members of an Indianapolis family who drowned in the lake.
In addition to Ripley Entertainment, the suit also names as defendants the former operators and manufacturers or designers of the duck boats in Branson: Ride the Ducks International in Jefferson City, Mo.; …
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