Imagine receiving a call from your captain informing you the U.S. Marshal arrested your yacht? Keith Brais, a Florida Board Certified Maritime Lawyer, has defended yacht owners for over twenty years and will walk you through the steps needed to release your vessel.
Brais law’s cruise injury attorney Richard Rusak recently won a case before Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal. The case involved a Honduran crewmember who worked as a cabin steward aboard a Carnival Cruise Line ship. Being a cabin steward, the crewmember was required to clean dozens of cabins, including lifting heavy mattress to change linens, for the next cruise. Though it was Carnival’s policy to have teams of two crewmembers working together to “turn over” these cabins, Carnival failed to provide an assistant. Given the short period of time he had to complete his job, the heavy lifting involved and because Carnival did not provide with an assistant, the cabin steward injured his back.
The maritime attorneys Keith Brais & Richard Rusak of the Brais law firm had the honor to represent Mr. Lloyd Hughes. Mr. Hughes was an assistant engineer for Ft. Worth, Texas based CSC Applied Technologies, LLC. CSC Applied Technologies was awarded a contract from the United States Navy to furnish all personnel, services and such other resources necessary to maintain and operate the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC). Located on Andros Island in the Bahamas, AUTEC’s mission is to provide instrumented operational areas in a real world environment to satisfy research, development, test and evaluation requirements and operational performance assessment of war fighter readiness in support of the full spectrum of maritime warfare.
Keith Brais and Richard Rusak of the Brais maritime law firm obtained a ruling from a Florida court allowing the wife of an injured seaman to pursue a claim for loss of consortium. Loss of consortium is a claim typically possessed by the spouse of a person injured by the fault of another. This claim includes compensation for household chores the injured spouse now cannot perform as well as compensation for the non-injured spouse’s loss of comfort and diminished social life the accident brought upon the marriage. Maritime law does not allow every spouse of an injured person to make a claim for loss of consortium. In fact, due to the improper interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling, the law has been rather unsettled.
Miami lawyer Keith Brais obtained a ruling from a Federal Court finding a cruise line can be held responsible for a rape caused by the over service of alcohol. The complaint failed in the Southern District of Florida alleges a passenger participated in a Norwegian Cruise Line organized pub crawl which occurred on the cruise ship NORWEGIAN SUN. After the pub crawl, the passenger remained at the last bar to have additional drinks with some of the other pub crawl participants. The plaintiff alleges she became intoxicated from the drinks served on the cruise ship. Court papers reveal the passenger walked to a public ladies room located near a café. While in a stall, a man opened the door, spun her around and raped her. Affidavits filed in the case assert due to her intoxicated state she was unable to fend off her attacker.
