The family of an Irish fashion designer found dead on board a luxury yacht in the US is planning to file a $50million wrongful death suit against the investor who owned the boat.

Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra, 33, met with Christopher Durnan on the night of August 4, 2025, aboard his yacht, Ripple, at the ritzy Montauk Yacht Club in the Hamptons, to discuss her swimwear fashion company.

But the meeting ended in horror when businessman Mr Durnan was spotted running down the dock naked around midnight, screaming for help and indicating that his guest had passed out.

Bystanders then clambered on board the yacht to try to revive her but Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra, from Monacurragh, Carlow, was declared dead at the scene.

The fashionista’s family are now planning to file a $50million (€43.3million) wrongful death suit against Mr Durnan in New York Supreme Court, according to a filing on Tuesday, exactly one year after they learned of her untimely death.

The suit accuses Mr Durnan, who is believed to have invested more than $200,000 in Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra’s bikini boutique, of causing her death through assault and negligence.

The filing claims the father of two ‘ intentionally and wrongfully assaulted’ the fashion designer, without describing the specific accusations against him. It further accuses him of gross negligence, recklessness and wanton conduct that directly caused Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra’s death – either individually or in combination with one another.

The family are now seeking ‘to recover damages for the personal injuries and conscious pain and suffering sustained by Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra prior to her death’ as well as punitive damages and pecuniary damages to her family, according to the filing obtained by Extra.ie.

The summons comes as the Nolan-O’Slatarra family continues to press the Suffolk County police for answers about her mysterious death.

‘We are in the same place where we were this time 12 months ago,’ a source close to the family told the Irish Independent last week. ‘We knew, and were being told, very little then – and we know even less now.’

Detectives have only said that an initial postmortem ‘did not show evidence of violence and her final cause of death is pending further investigation’.

Sources have previously speculated that she succumbed to a drug overdose after photos from the yacht showed a dusting of mysterious white powder across a seat on the 50-foot boat.

However, sources close to the family told the New York Post that an independent autopsy they had commissioned showed the designer had only ‘trace amounts of cocaine’ in her system.

Instead, they claimed, it found some sort of assault led directly to her death.

Mr Durnan was previously accused of assault by retired firefighter Michael Balfe, who claimed in a 2022 lawsuit that he was ‘viciously attacked, bit and assaulted’ at New York’s Webster Hall on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Mr Durnan was arrested on misdemeanour charges but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, receiving a one-year conditional discharge. He claimed ‘justifiable self-defence’, and the civil suit was settled in December 2023.

An attorney representing Mr Durnan maintains that he was not responsible for Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra’s death.

Robert Holdman instead claimed that Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra went limp between 10.30pm and 11pm on August 4, and Mr Durnan feared she was having a heart attack. At that point, he tried to perform CPR but it was to no avail, the lawyer claimed.

‘She was gone almost immediately,’ Mr Holdman told New York Magazine last year. ‘She was non-responsive.’

The lawyer then went on to claim that his client stripped his clothes off that night because they were ‘soaked’ with Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra’s vomit.

The Carlow woman first arrived in the US about a decade ago and soon took to her glam new life in the Big Apple, saying in a 2024 interview that she ‘loved’ living on the Upper East Side.

The designer went on to establish several companies, including fashion accessories brand Duper and swimwear label East x East. But the designer was also involved in a legal dispute when a former employer claimed in a 2022 lawsuit that she stole $34,000 from a company bank account. She denied the allegation, and the case was settled.

Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra also married and later split from a man named Sam Ryan, finalising an uncontested divorce just months before her death.

Extra.ie contacted an attorney for the Nolan-O’Slatarra family. An attorney representing Mr Durnan could not be reached for comment.

By Melissa Koenig