As previously reported, many cruise lines including Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) have arbitration provisions in their crewmember / seafarer employment contracts. Depending upon the cruise line and when the employment contract was signed, the terms may impose foreign law to be applied to the crewmember / seafarer’s personal injury claim and require arbitration to be conducted in a foreign country.
Under the Jones Act, an employer has the duty to provide its seaman employees with a reasonably safe place to work. An employer breaches that duty if it does not act with ordinary prudence. In other words, if a maritime employer disregards a danger that it knew or should have known and that danger causes a crewmember’s injury, it will be found liable under the Jones Act. Generally, an employer violates the Jones Act when it fails to maintain an area such as a deck, fails to properly instruct an employee on how to safely go about performing his job duties or does not provide the crewmember with appropriate safety gear. These situations, though common, are not the only ways an employer can breach its duty owed to its crewmembers.
It is no secret that many passengers are raped or sexually assaulted aboard cruise ships each year. This sad fact caused Congress to pass the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. That Act requires, among other things, all cabin doors be outfitted with peepholes, limited access to cabins by crewmembers, rape kits available at the ship’s medical faculty and that all claims of rape/sexual assault be reported to the FBI. Moreover, maritime law holds a cruise line strictly liable for any sexual attack by its cruise staff against a passenger. However, there is a question as to the cruise line’s responsibility to passengers sexually assaulted by employees of the tour operators and concessionaires which are approved and recommended by the cruise lines. Recently, a federal court allowed a passenger who was drugged and sexually assaulted at a shore side restaurant recommended by Carnival Cruise Lines to maintain a lawsuit against the cruise line.
Most people don’t know cruise lines have closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras recording the movements of passengers and crew in many of their ship’s common areas. CCTV videos are extremely important in cruise accident lawsuits as they confirm the plaintiff’s accident. Cruise lines, however, are hesitant to produce these videos. The reason is their attorneys study the videos and ask hyper detailed questions to the injured plaintiff regarding the accident. The cruise lines hope the injured passenger or crew member traumatized by the event will not remember every minute detail of the accident which usually happened a year or more before the deposition. If the passenger or crew member gives an answer slightly different from what is shown on the video, the cruise lines will try to discredit the plaintiff in front of the judge or jury at trial. In short, cruise lines are trying to use the CCTV videos to play “gotcha” in order to paint the plaintiff in a poor light.
Nearly every major cruise line operating out of the United States requires passengers injured aboard their ships to bring a lawsuit within one year of the accident. This little known fact is found in the cruise boarding pass. For example, Carnival Cruise Lines’ boarding pass provides a, “suit to recover on any such claim shall not be maintainable unless filed within one year after the date of the injury, event, illness or death…” However, what happens when the injured passenger is a minor? Are minors held to the same standard as adult passengers? The answer is NO!
