On Friday March 13, 2020, Ride the Ducks Seattle quacked for the last time. Without any announcement, the company went out of business. The closure of the Seattle company followed the shuttering and sale in December 2017 of Ride the Ducks International (manufacturer of the ducks) to Ripley’s Entertainment. Both companies had been sued by the Dinh Group led by the Stritmatter Law Firm team – resulting in a $123Million jury verdict and additional settlements exceeding another $12M.
The victims of the September 24, 2016 Ride the Ducks disaster in Seattle, always hoped that one day both companies would be shut down so that the public would be spared another tragedy. That hope did not come soon enough. In July 2019, a duck vehicle sank in Branson Missouri, killing 17 people just a few months before the Seattle trial began.
Still, the victims take a measure of comfort in knowing that both companies are now gone.
Unfortunately, there is still the possibility that someone else will buy the duck death machines and resurrect them again as tourist vehicles. That is what happened in Branson Missouri. We can only wish that the Seattle ducks will instead go to a junkyard.
