Seven months ago today, New York attorney Ed Fagan reportedly filed a lawsuit naming a French hotel chain, the National Weather Service, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) and others as defendents alleging that they failed to adequately warn victims of the December 26 tsunami.
The lawsuit has more or less disappeared from public view, as Fagan faced allegations about his own conduct in unrelated matters. But several stories about the lawsuit have found their way onto the internet in recent weeks, and it appears this lawsuit has been filed and refiled again.
TheAge.com carried an Associated Press story on September 6 saying the lawsuit was filed that day; the story carried no dateline, but the location evidently was Paris, as reported several days later by FindLaw.com. FindLaw's story said prosecutors had opened a preliminary inquiry. An earlier story at News24.com carried Thai authorities' denial that they were negligent "when they failed to issue warnings ahead of December's Indian ocean tsunami...." The Bangkok-datelined story said the plaintiffs' lawyers had filed suit in US District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 29; that assertion will prompt more internet searching in light of the initial reports that the lawsuit was filed in March.
These recent stories did not mention the PTWC as a defendent, but another AP story posted on Honolulu television station KHNL's web site today says the lawsuit alleges the Center "did not do enough to protect people from the December 26th tsunami...."
The lawsuit may just be the inevitable sideshow fallout one expects after nearly every disaster, but it conceivably could affect the revision of NOAA's media-notification procedures when tsunamis are suspected by the PTWC's personnel. We're still waiting for the draft of those new procedures (see September 22 post below).
