Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Disney Cruise Line announced plans for a new ship this week set to take sail in 2025.
Disney’s Destiny Cruise Ship will sail four and five-night voyages from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas and the Western Caribbean starting in November 2025. The ship is reportedly a merging of the stories of villains and heroes alike from Disney, Pixar and Marvel’s most-beloved stories. The ship will have three restaurants, themed “splash zones” and live shows with character meet-and-greets.
This comes just two weeks after Carnival Cruise Lines announced the addition of three more ships to its fleet with the carrying capacity to rival that of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas which is reportedly the largest cruise ship in operation today. The cruise ship industry is rapidly expanding after taking a major hit following the COVID-19 pandemic which saw the industry shut down to stop the spread of the virus. According to data based on research from J.P. Morgan, by 2028, the cruise ship industry will capture approximately 3.8% of the $1.9 trillion global vacation market. Globally, 35.7 million passengers are expected to set sail in 2024. This is a 6% increase from pre-COVID-19 numbers.
Port Miami, which has been dubbed the “cruising capital of the world,” the increase in passengers from before the pandemic is already evident. Last year, Port Miami attracted 7,299,294 passengers to the area from all over the world, according to reporting from NBC 6 South Florida. This is an almost 7% increase from before the pandemic.
With the increase in passengers heading out on these voyages comes an increase in potential injuries.
Leesfield & Partners
With 48 years of cruise litigation and maritime law experience, and over $38 million secured for clients and their families to date, Leesfield & Partners’ personal injury attorneys have represented clients in all manner of injury aboard cruise ships. From slip and falls, medical malpractice, criminal acts and excursion injuries, both crewmembers and cruise passengers alike have sought out Leesfield & Partners attorneys for their legal expertise.
Falls
Leesfield & Partners attorneys have guided clients and their families through the complicated legal waters following falls. From a fall on a pool deck, incurring a painful injury likely needing surgery, to a fatal fall from a cruise ship balcony, attorneys have seen the devastation and profit-first mindset these companies have developed when dealing with these types of cases.
One family represented by the firm tragically lost their 8-year-old girl when she fell five stories to her death on a cruise ship. The child had separated from her family and learned over an interior railing. The badly built railing shifted the child’s center of gravity and resulted in her fall. A six-figure recovery was obtained for the family in that case.
The firm has seen dozens of slip and falls and trip and falls aboard cruise ships resulting in over $3 million in recovery for clients. The majority of these falls were due to wet pool decks or wet floors and all could have been easily avoided.
Medical Malpractice
Modern cruising has become akin to traveling within a mini-city, the firm’s Managing Partner and Founder, Ira Leesfield, has previously said. With bigger and better and a never-ending cycle of competition driving cruise ships to have more amenities such as go-kart tracks, twisting water slides and perilous zip-lines, cruise ships need to be able to house and maintain the population they are attracting with such features. As the industry expands, so do requirements in medical facilities to be able to treat a wide array of illnesses and injuries that may happen on board the ship. Time and time again, however, Leesfield & Partners attorneys have seen how ill-equipped these onboard facilities and their staff truly are, to the detriment of passengers and their families.
Many cruise ship doctors and other medical staff are not up to par with U.S. standards. One doctor whose orders contributed to the amputation of a crewmember’s right arm when he went to the infirmary feeling nauseous was searching online solutions of how to treat the patient. The doctor had ordered the maximum dose of a drug be given rapidly through the man’s IV despite a clear black box warning label explicitly outlining that this drug should be given intramuscularly over two minutes. Though the man was in immediate agony and his symptoms included immense swelling and blackened fingertips, the doctor refused to medevac him to a hospital. The man spent 17 hours from his first symptoms in pain before he was able to go to a real hospital. Days later, after a procedure to save his arm, doctors at the hospital on land were forced to amputate.
The man was awarded $3,337,500 in that case.
Another client who needed a blood transfusion on board a ship was given blood that had not been screened or tested, resulting in the client contracting HIV. As there is no cure for HIV, the client will live the rest of their life with the virus. A multi-million award was recovered for the client in that case.
Leesfield & Partners has also handled numerous cases where clients were refused evacuations while they were having a stroke on board a cruise ship. Doctors in the case of a 16-year-old stroke victim misdiagnosed the girl with a seizure disorder though she presented with clear symptoms that were evident to her family. Cruise doctors ignored the pleas from the girl’s family and refused evacuation. A multi-million dollar settlement was secured for the girl and her family for the doctor’s failure to diagnose and evacuate the child.
Crimes
Leesfield & Partners was recently obtained in a case where a cruise ship employee was found to be filming passengers in their private bathrooms. In an article published in the Daily Business Review, Leesfield was quoted discussing if he sees an uptick in crimes aboard cruise ships and the challenges presented in litigating these types of cases. The main issue, Leesfield said, was lax policing and the industry’s profit focus rather than prioritizing passenger safety.
“I do see an upward tick,” Leesfield said. “But, in all fairness, there are many more cruise passengers, and the cruise population is higher. So, the numbers go up, particularly when the cruise population is up, but the enforcement and policing is down. So, it’s sort of a perfect storm. And I think this will continue until the cruise lines get a program together.”
One case handled by the firm involved a Canadian woman traveling alone on a cruise ship who was raped in her cabin by a crewmember. The crewmember was able to obtain entry into the woman’s cabin via a keycard. Attorneys with the firm obtained a multi-million recovery for the woman.
