Attorneys representing the families of four victims killed when the Conception dive boat burned and sank off the coast of Santa Cruz Island last September are putting the blame on the boat's owner and its captain.
The disaster took the lives of 34 people. It is the deadliest maritime disaster in California in more than 150 years.
"Their training was inappropriate and their policies and procedures were deficient," attorney Robert Mongeluzzi, of the Philadelphia-based law firm Saltz, Mongeluzzi, Barrett & Bendesky said at a news conference Monday.
A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board has found that all six crew members of the Conception were asleep when the fire broke out. Mongeluzzi said that was a deadly breach of federal law, which requires at least one person awake and on patrol around the clock.