LIHUE — A German couple is suing a Kauai tour company for allegedly crashing into the wall of a Napali Coast cave two years ago.
The lawsuit was filed Aug. 9 in Fifth Circuit Court against Bali Hai Tours by Constanze and Roland Rischer, who traveled to Kauai from their home in Bavaria, Germany for a vacation in August 2017 and signed up for a sightseeing boat trip along the Napali Coast.
According to the civil complaint, the captain of the boat got into trouble shortly after steering the tour into an ocean cave and realized a swell was beginning to surge.
“The captain admitted to the passengers,” the complaint says, “that he had underestimated the waves and that the boat needed to exit the cave quickly.”
In an attempt to get out of the cave against the swell, the lawsuit says the captain decided to “rapidly accelerate the small Zodiac boat,” a decision that, according to the complaint, “proved disastrous and changed the plaintiffs lives forever.”
“The captain lost control of the Zodiac and it crashed into a cave wall at a high rate of speed,” the complaint says. “As a result, Mrs. Rischer was thrown head-first from the Zodiac into the cave wall.”
According to the suit, video footage taken by a passenger on the boat showed the accident “in horrific detail” and captured “the blood curdling screams of Mrs. Rischer as she was writhing in pain in a supine position in the hull of the Zodiac.”
“Towards the end of the video,” the complaint says, “the Zodiac captain is overheard proclaiming to the passengers: ‘Oh she hit her head. Sorry, that was my bad.’”
The lawsuit claims Rischer suffered severe and permanent injuries, including “a debilitating and life-changing traumatic brain injury” that the complaint says was caused by the negligence of the tour company and the captain’s “ill-fated decision to operate a Zodiac boat filled with tourists into an oceanic cave during unsafe ocean conditions.”
The Rischers are suing for medical expenses and “other special damages” to compensate for what their lawsuit describes as “pain of body and mind” and Constanze Rischer’s “loss of ability to conduct her daily business.”
Bali Hai Tours, operating under its parent corporation, Kauai Boat Enterprises LLC — both companies were named in the lawsuit — used to run sightseeing boat tours out of Hanalei, but the company appears to have shut down.
According to the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs online business directory, no annual filing was submitted for Kauai Boat Enterprises in 2019 and the business is not in good standing.
A Facebook page for Bali Hai Tours hasn’t been updated since late 2016 and lists a website that is no longer registered.
A phone call to a number listed on the social media page was answered by a man who said his business occupies the building Bali Hai Tours rented before going out of business after the North Shore floods last year.
Joe Waldvogel is listed as the agent for Kauai Boat Enterprises in the DCCA business directory. He was cited in 2015 by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources for operating a boat under the name Bali Hai Tours without a valid commercial use permit, according to DLNR documents requesting Waldvogel be fined $5,000 for violating state permit laws in Hanalei Bay on multiple occasions.
The tour company was sued in June 2015 over an incident in 2013, when a female passenger of Bali Hai Tours said the boat she was on suddenly stopped and she was “violently thrown 6-8 feet from the rear of the vessel where she was seated up to the front of the boat and into the steel captain’s chair.”
That lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in September 2016.
