Lawsuit: Southport Marina trying to blame boat owners for Hurricane Isaias damage

Jun. 18—When Hurricane Isaias hit Brunswick County last August, it left the Southport Marina in ruins, scattering boats and docks across a nearby marsh and requiring more than $5 million in repairs.

Now, in a lawsuit filed this week, boat owners docked at the marina at the time say they should not have to pay for any of the damage.

The suit comes after boat owners started receiving letters from the marina asking them to pay for damage based on the size of their vessels, as well as separate costs for salvaging their boats.

According to the suit, the Southport Marina sent these letters to more than 100 boat owners with damage and salvaging costs ranging from $8,500 to $25,000 per boat owner.

The Southport Marina claims the damage is the boat owners' responsibility for leaving their vessels in the marina, rather than hauling them away as typically done when a hurricane approaches.

"The Marina would have been OK if the boats had not been there," Robin Rose, a representative of Preston Development Company, which owns the marina, wrote in an email. "Now that we have been sued, we look forward to the Court reviewing and analyzing the facts of this case and the law that applies."

Their claim is backed by a March letter from Andrew Consulting Engineers, which began investigating the cause of the damage in August.

"If the vessels had vacated the marina, the pilings would not have been overstressed with the storm conditions, and the marina mooring system would not have failed," the letter states.

It concludes that the "added lateral forces due to the presence of the vessels" are what caused the failure of the mooring system and the damage to the marina.

However, according to the lawsuit, the marina is trying to pass the blame onto boat owners because it "neglected to purchase property insurance for all of those structures other than its fuel dock."

As part of the boat owners' agreements with the marina, they are required to keep insurance, name the marina as an additional named insured, and are responsible for any damage their vessel causes to the marina.

But the suit claims the boat owners have asked the marina to identify specific damage their respective vessels caused to the marina and to show how that damage resulted from fault of the boat owners, only for their requests to be ignored.

It alleges instead damage came about because the marina structures were at or near the end of their service life and were poorly maintained.

According to Rose, the marina has "voluntarily provided voluminous materials" in response to requests from the boat owners' attorney, but did not specifically say they were provided with the evidence they are asking for.

"We can readily demonstrate that and look forward to doing so," Rose said. "Any suggestion that we did not provide that information is just not so."

Additionally, the suit claims some of the boat owners who received letters had agreements with the marina that had either already expired before the hurricane hit, or never had agreements at all.

It also alleged the marina failed to haul out vessels that paid to be part of the Hurricane Club, despite requests from some of their members. According to the club agreement, the marina was to haul out the vessels within three days of a hurricane's landfall projection.

"As this matter is now in litigation, we anticipate making future comments in court," Rose said.

Reporter John Orona can be reached at 910-343-2327 or [email protected].

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