The maiden voyage of Palm Beach’s newest cruise ship the Grand Celebration was cancelled after it failed to pass a Coast Guard safety inspection. Several hundred passengers were hoping to watch Super Bowl and take advantage of the Grand Celebration’s amenities over a two day cruise. After delaying the voyage for several hours, Charlie Kinnear, president of Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line, announced to the passengers that the cruise ship’s public address system failed inspection. Without out having a properly functioning public address system, the ship could not be cleared to leave port. The ship’s public address system is vital to passenger safety as it serves as the principal mean to communicate instructions in case of an emergency. Passengers were given the option of reschedule their voyages along with another free cruise or receive a refund. The Port of Palm Beach has not had a cruise ship since the Bahamas Celebration grounded in Freeport, The Bahamas last October 31st. The ill fated Bahamas Celebration was also owned by company of which Charlie Kinnear was president.
Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard received a call from the Norwegian Gem, requesting an emergency medevac for a 66 year old passenger who was experiencing complications arising from diabetes. Per reports, the Coast Guard received the call around 11:45 a.m. and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew was dispatched from Elizabeth City. At the time of the medevac, the woman was approximately 220 miles southeast of Portsmouth. The Coast Guard made it to the cruise ship around 2:30 p.m., evacuating the woman and taking her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. It was last reported that she was in stable condition.
We reported last November that the Federal Eleventh Circuit issued a landmark opinion called Franza v. Royal Caribbean. This ruling found cruise lines can be held vicariously liable for the medical malpractice of their ship board doctors. Prior to the Franza decision, trial courts would routinely dismiss passenger claims brought against cruise lines for doctors’ malfeasance finding they are independent contractors. Being that most cruise ship doctors are from foreign countries, it was very difficult to obtain jurisdiction over their tortious acts in the United States. This caused devastating results for passengers who suffered at the hands of substandard doctors and for the families of loved ones who died because the cruise ship doctors provided poor care. Many truly hurt people were forced to go without just compensation as they were not allowed to sue the cruise lines for medical malpractice or unable to obtain jurisdiction over culpable foreign doctors. Franza changed this.
Houston area news outlets are reporting that the Coast Guard rescued a sick 8-month-old baby girl from the Carnival Triumph Monday. Sources say the emergency call went out because the small passenger was experiencing seizures and had difficulty breathing. A MH-65 Dolphin helicopter was dispatched from Air Station Houston to medevac the child, the child’s mother and ship’s nurse to Memorial Hermann Hospital.
A new federal law passed earlier this month that requires the Department of Transportation to report crimes allegedly committed onboard a cruise ship. The new law is quite a departure from its predecessor, the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (hereinafter “Act”), which only made incident data available if the alleged crime was “no longer under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Opponents of the law maintain it is not necessary, arguing that the major cruise lines began providing crime data on their respective websites since 2013. However, it is important to note that the data provided on these websites cannot be relied on as a representative figure insofar as the total number of crimes that occur aboard cruise vessels. Specifically, the major cruise lines only report incidents that meet the requirements of the Cruise Vessel and Safety Act, which limit reporting to incidents involving “homicide, suspicious death, a missing United States national, kidnapping, assault with serious bodily injury … firing or tampering with the vessel, or theft of money or property in excess of $10,000.” Thus, if a crew member stole something from a passenger not in excess of $10,000, then the cruise lines were not required to publicly disclose it. The above may be characterized as an illustration of the lobby efforts by the Cruise Lines to modify the Act in a way that only certain crimes require disclosure.
