Here's a thread on the IMDB explaining why this scene was deleted from the movie.

IMDB Thread on Sahara - Kitty Manock Scene

I just read the thread, and it seems to be two sides to any story. Dayna was probably the wrong person for the part (Lack of acting skills). If this is the real reason Cussler is sueing the producers then he has a problem. But it also seems that hollywood is a pack of crying babies, out to put Cussler down because he doesn't beg then to produce one of his movies
It would have been good to see all the plots in the movie but then it would be too long. (I fell asleep thru LOTR, what's the big dealwith these movies?).
Just saw National Treasure and found it to be a 100% better film than Sahara, so cussler has something to whinge about. I would probably need to see Sahara a few more times to see if it grows on me. I hope,hope,hope that they do a better job of the next Cussler movie and not leave anything out. Maybe the producers can film every scene and let the cussler fans decide if it should be in the film release or not as we are the most critical of his work.

tsk...Thomas you deceived us. That thread does not in any way "explain" why the scene was cut. It only indicates that one person who allegedly saw the cut scene judged Ms. Cussler's acting ability to be sub par. Everything that follows is conjecture based on hearsay, and most of it can be discounted by virtue of the paper trail. The lawsuit was filed long before the final edit of the film--in fact, before they even wrapped production. If anything, one might think the director would have either put the scene in to make Clive happy or left it in to show how awful Dayna's acting was in order to give Clive a very public eff'u (think about it)

Frankly, I'm suspicious that the claim is true--they would know from the dailies whether the scenes were truly that awful, and would adjust accordingly by either reshooting or editing to salvage them. Since the movie is already on the bubble of being too long, I'm sure time considerations and continuity had much more to do with the decision. Bad acting is rarely recognized by the industry, and never stopped anything from getting put on the screen.

Youre right Sean. Most of these threads basically get nothing done. And I completely agree that this was not the reason for Dr. Cussler filing his lawsuit. Im sorry if it seemed like I thought that this was the case.

However, I just wanted to post this to confirm that the Kitty Mannock scene had indeed been filmed but had been cut from the movie. We SHOULD NOT trust the person on why it was cut (bad acting), only that the scene had been cut from the movie.