This week in Rome, court-appointed experts have presented their 270-page analysis on what truly happened on the evening of January 13, 2012, which saw the cruise liner Costa Concordia hit rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio and finished its course beached on its size. As a result of a…
The fate of Captain Francesco Schettino of the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship seems more and more certain with each new piece of evidence is released by the Italian prosecutors. Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog has covered this incident from the beginning. At first, it was confirmed that Captain Schettino abandoned…
We began reporting on the Costa Concordia as soon as the tragedy occurred on Friday, January 13th, 2012. That night, thousands of passengers lived through a collective nightmare which ended in the most blatant mishandling of an emergency aboard a large cruise ship since the Titanic. Every single passenger aboard…
Since the tragedy of the Costa Concordia occurred last January off of the coast of “Isola del Giglio”, Costa Cruise Lines has been in a public relations storm that seems never-ending. Captain Francesco Schettino, the ultimate responsible person aboard the sinking ship, was arrested the day following the events. This…
One hundred days have passed since the tragic events of the Costa Concordia which saw the confirmed death of 30 cruise passengers and the disappearance of 2 additional passengers whose bodies have yet to be found. It took more than 100 days for the cruise industry to agree on three…
In a previous article, we have listed the reasons why the Costa Concordia cruise passengers will have a strong legal argument to lift the cruise company’s limits of liability under the Athens Convention. The language contained in the Convention allow the cruise liner to limit is financial liability to a…
The Athens Convention establishes a comprehensive integrated system to govern the liability of cruise ship operators for personal injuries and property damage sustained by its passengers. It contains standards for establishing liability and permissible defenses as well as its own statute of limitations and venue provisions. The Convention was primarily…
A newly released audio exchange between Port Authority and Costa Concordia Captain Fransesco Schettino was released today. Below is the transcript of the exchange: Captain Schettino: It’s Capt. Schettino. Port Authority: Schettino, listen to me, there are people trapped onboard, now you go back, you will go with your rescue…
The disaster that shook the passengers of the Costa Concordia when the ship ran aground and capsized near the Island of Giglio, Italy, while probably the most tragic in recent memory, was not the first tragedy of its kind. In 1998, the Monarch of the Seas had an eerily similar…
While investigators are looking at the black box of the cruise ship Costa Concordia that sunk off the coast of Italy, prosecutors did not waste time in gathering facts and evidence from passengers and crew members, which have led them to arrest Captain Francesco Schettino on allegations of manslaughter and…