LISTEN: Attorney Ben Crump has filed a lawsuit over the October 2024 Sapelo Island dock collapse that killed seven attendees of a Gullah Geechee culture festival. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.

The Sapelo Island dock as seen on Sept. 21, 2024, aboard a ferry departing the island.

The Sapelo Island dock as seen Sept. 21, 2024, from aboard a ferry departing the island — about a month before a deadly gangway collapse at the dock killed seven people.

Credit: Benjamin Payne / GPB News

Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump announced a lawsuit Wednesday against four companies accused of professional negligence resulting in a fatal dock collapse last year on Coastal Georgia's Sapelo Island.

Seven people died after the ferry dock's gangway gave out on Oct. 19, 2024, plunging at least 20 people into the water below, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which owns and operates the dock and ferry.

The victims were returning from an annual festival celebrating indigenous Black culture on Sapelo Island, home to one of the nation's last remaining intact communities of Gullah Geechee people — descendants of enslaved West Africans who worked island plantations in the Southeast.

"It was supposed to be a celebration of Black pride, but it became a day of great, great Black loss of humanity and life," Crump said at a news conference in Atlanta. "And so, we're filing this lawsuit to speak to that tragedy, to say that we won't let them sweep it under the rug."

The lawsuit represents more than 40 people, including surviving victims and family members of the deceased.

Monetary damages were not specified in the 201-page filing, but Crump during the news conference referred to the case as a "multimillion-dollar lawsuit."

"This tragedy was totally preventable," he said. "These seven people did not have to die on the Sapelo Island gangway dock, if people would have put safety over money."

Although the collapse took place in McIntosh County, the lawsuit was filed in Gwinnett County because Centennial Contractors Enterprises — the general contractor of the dock — is based there, Crump said.

Three more companies are named as defendants, including Stevens & Wilkinson, the project architect; EMC Engineering Services, the civil marine engineering consultant; and Crescent Equipment Company, the gangway fabricator.

In response to GPB's request for comment on the lawsuit, Centennial Contractors Enterprises said in a statement that it does not comment on pending legal proceedings, adding, "Our deepest sympathies are with those who lost loved ones or were injured."

SSOE Group, the parent company of Stevens & Wilkinson, said in a statement to GPB that it was unable to comment on the lawsuit, adding, "This was a tragic event and our thoughts remain with those affected."

EMC Engineering Services and Crescent Equipment Company did not respond to GPB's requests for comment.

Attorney Jeff Goodman of Philadelphia-based law firm Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky — which is also representing plaintiffs in the case — said his firm constructed a replica of the gangway to conduct forensic testing.

"What that has proven with clarity is that this gangway was capable of supporting less than one-third of what it needed to," Goodman said. "This tragedy was not just preventable. It was inevitable. It wasn't a matter of if this gangway would collapse. It was a matter of when this gangway would collapse."

Crump said more defendants may be named in an updated version of the lawsuit, adding that his team would "let the evidence lead us."

Tags: Gullah Geechee  Sapelo Island  Ben Crump  Georgia