Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
A North Carolina teenager faces a felony charge after raging in a cruise ship elevator in which he allegedly beat another man into unconsciousness.
Michael White, 18, was taken into custody in Fort Lauderdale Friday after the incident aboard Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas. He was charged with felony aggravated battery, causing bodily harm.
At least one other person was listed as a co-defendant, according to reporting from local media, but that person’s name did not appear in Broward court records.
The dispute happened Thursday and was started over “elevator behavior,” according to Cruise News Today, a YouTube channel that delivers daily tidbits of information involving cruise lines in North America. A group of teens were allegedly jumping in the elevator, causing the cabin to sway back and forth, when a woman approached them to ask them to stop what they were doing.
The group argued with the woman and called her names until a man who was with her yelled at them to stop. When the man and woman attempted to get off the elevator, the group would not move out of their way and the man “pushed through the crowd to exit the elevator,” WPLG reported.
The man was hit in the face, staggered backward and fell to the ground where he was kicked and eventually blacked out, according to police. When he awoke, he told authorities he was in a pool of blood on the floor.
White has since been released from jail on bond.
Cruise Crime Data
The latest available data from the Department of Transportation shows there have been about six assaults with serious bodily injury, one suspicious death, one missing person, seven sexual assaults and 18 rape cases aboard ships reported to authorities. These incidents are alleged to have taken place from October to December 2024.
Cruise lines with ships sailing to or from the United States are required to report criminal activity to the FBI such as sexual assaults, missing persons, physical assaults, property crimes and other alleged criminal activity every quarter, per the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. The DOT has published the total number of reported incidents online since at least 2010.
In the first quarter of 2024, which ran from January to March 2024, there were eight assaults with serious bodily injury, 16 sexual assaults, 16 rapes and one missing persons case reported. This marks a small decrease from 47 to 38 total reported incidents of criminal activity aboard ships.
In data from 2023, there were 131 sex crimes reported to the FBI including 52 sexual assaults and 79 rapes happening on ships embarking and disembarking to and from the United States. In 2022, a year that did not differentiate between sexual assault and rape, there were a total of 87 alleged sex crimes. The data began differentiating between the two crimes in 2023.
Leesfield & Partners
Leesfield & Partners is a personal injury in Florida with over 48 years of experience representing injured victims and grieving families. In decades of trial experience, our attorneys have litigated cases of medical malpractice, negligent security, premises liability, injuries stemming from motor vehicle accidents, and cruise ship cases. Our skilled attorneys have regularly secured record and historic results for clients and families who were injured due to the negligence of cruise lines. Some notable cruise ship cases handled by the firm include that of mother and daughter who were involved in a tragic parasailing incident in which Leesfield & partners secured a $7.25 million settlement for the grieving family and a multi-million-dollar result for a baby girl whose meningococcal meningitis was misdiagnosed as a stomach bug, causing eventual amputation of both her feet and the fingers of one hand.
The first case occurred after a mother and daughter purchased a parasailing excursion aboard their cruise ship. While hundreds of feet up in the air, an inadequately maintained piece of equipment broke, sending the two hurdling towards the water. The mother was tragically killed in this incident and the daughter was left with a catastrophic traumatic brain injury.
In the second case, a couple took their 9-month-old baby on a cruise ship. During the trip, the child was taken to the infirmary after they noticed she was pale and lethargic. The inadequate cruise ship doctors diagnosed the child with a stomach bug, despite her parents’ insistence it was something else and her worsening symptoms. The parents pleaded to be medevacked off the ship and were told that option was “impossible.” An investigation revealed that these physicians didn’t bother asking the U.S. Coast Guard about whether or not this was true. The doctor did not prescribe life-saving antibiotics until 16 hours later.
Leesfield & Partners recovered $5.5 million for the family in that case.
Cruise lines are considered common carriers, a classification that imposes a heightened duty of care toward their passengers. As such, they are responsible for ensuring passenger safety—from preventing slip-and-fall accidents on slippery decks to having adequately-trained medical staff. If a cruise line fails to meet this duty of care, it can be held liable for resulting damages.
Protecting passengers from violent crimes falls under this duty of care.
Previously, Leesfield & Partners represented a Canadian woman who was traveling on a cruise ship. During her stay, a member of the crew abused his employee status and used a keycard to gain access into the unsuspecting woman’s cabin where he launched a violent attack and raped her.
The firm obtained a multi-million-dollar result for the woman following this horrific ordeal.
Trial Lawyer Bernardo Pimentel II is handling an ongoing cruise ship case in which a crewmember was found planting hidden cameras in the private cabins of passengers. The passengers who were filmed, including our client, ranged in age from adults to children. This crewmember was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for his crimes.
Our client has been left with severe emotional scarring following the incident.
