Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Photos were published online of the damage to a cruise ship that was hit by storm-force winds while sailing from Spain to Miami.
The frightening voyage resulted in the injury of at least one passenger who will be allowed to evacuate the ship for additional medical care on shore in Las Palmas, Spain. No other details, including the condition of the passenger, were immediately available Wednesday.
Passengers reported to CBS news that their captain said over the ship’s intercom speakers that the ship was impacted by winds that had gone from 46 mph to over 80 mph.
No other injuries were reported in the incident.
The photos show the back of a bar with dozens of smashed bottles and a cruise ship gift shop with merchandise toppled over.
To see the photos, Click Here.
Leesfield & Partners
Though winds and other weather conditions can often be unpredictable when on a voyage, cruise ships have a non-delegable duty to protect their passengers. This means having the proper training of crewmembers who will be able to react and tell passengers what to do, announcing when they are heading into bad weather and warning passengers to remain indoors or in their cabins during that time and having proper medical facilities and an adept team of doctors and nurses to address any injuries that might take place.
Thankfully, the passenger injured as a result of this incident was allowed to seek proper medical care on shore. Leesfield & Partners knows through its decades of representing injured clients and grieving families in cruise ship litigation, however, that this is not always the case.
Far too many times, the firm has seen cruise lines place their bottom line over the safety and health of the very passengers they are tasked with safeguarding during a voyage.
In a case where a woman was not permitted to evacuate a cruise line, the firm secured $4 million in damages for their client.
In another failure to evacuate case, Leesfield & partners obtained a $500,000 recovery for their client’s injuries.
A family whose patriarch suffered a heart attack while the ship was still in port was forced to watch him suffer for 18 hours after cruise officials refused to let them disembark. The ship left the port with the dying man still on board and sailed to Puerto Rico. Had they allowed the man to evacuate during this medical crisis, he could have sought out medical care on shore from a hospital and been saved.
Leesfield & Partners secured a multi-million dollar recovery for the family.
A woman traveling on a cruise ship suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, a type of stroke that happens when a blood vessel on or inside of the brain ruptures and bleeds. This can be caused by a myriad of factors, including a bleeding disorder, high blood pressure, an aneurysm or a head injury. The woman was, in fact, allowed to disembark from the ship but cruise employees failed to ensure that the airport they took her to was open when they arrived. She perished while waiting for transfer back to Broward County, Florida.
A 16-year-old represented by Leesfield & Partners was denied proper medical care by doctors who diagnosed her with a seizure disorder despite the fact she was exhibiting clear signs of a stroke. When family members insisted this was a stroke, doctors refuted their claims based on their assumption that teenagers “don’t have strokes.” Doctors refused to evacuate the patient.
In that case, attorneys with the firm obtained a multi-million dollar settlement for failure to diagnose and a failure to evacuate.
