Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
The horrors of a February 2013 Carnival Cruise are being revisited in a new Netflix documentary that dropped this week, and the story is nothing short of a total shipshow.
What was meant to be a four-day roundtrip from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico, turned into at least 4,000 passengers and crew being stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for almost a week after a fire damaged cables powering the Carnival Triumph. The toilets began overflowing and there was sewage dripping down the walls, witnesses can be seen explaining in the documentary, which was released Tuesday.
‘It Got Bad Fast’
“I’m telling you, it got bad fast,” one man told interviewers of the ordeal in “Trainwreck: Poop Cruise.”
The fire broke out in the middle of the night as the ship was heading back to the U.S. Passengers were awoken by blaring alarms and crewmembers were ordered to their stations. Cruise officials attempted to quell any panic from guests shortly before the power went out.
“You could hear the panic,” a woman said in the documentary. “It was terrifying.”
Without electricity, the toilets no longer functioned. To address this issue, cruise officials ordered passengers to use the showers to urinate and handed out biohazard bag for feces. After days of this, waste baskets began to fill up and passengers resorted to leaving their bags out in the hallway. Passengers described the cafeteria, hallways and other common areas as being laden with excrement.
Passengers described the experience as being in a “nightmare movie.” To escape the heat and smell inside of their cabins, many passengers took to the ship’s pool decks to sleep. People can be seen in the documentary footage carrying their mattress up a flight of stairs, presumably so that their makeshift accommodations were more comfortable. One man in the documentary described the scene as a “shantytown.”
With no cell service, chaos quickly ensued, and fights broke out. News only got out to media when guests were able to get cell service from a passing cruise ship and made calls to friends and family.
“Suddenly, everyone is out for themselves,” a man said in an interview.
Why Did it Take so Long?
Cruise officials planned to have a tugboat pull the ship back to a port in Mexico, but the ship had drifted so far toward the United States that the crew was forced to pull the ship to Mobile, Alabama. The ship drifted for four days.
One attorney in the documentary argued that the ship should never have set sail. Document findings showed that the ship allegedly had an issue with fires.
It took $115 million to clean up and rehab the ship, which was later renamed.
The passengers received a refund, $500, transportation reimbursements and a voucher for a free cruise with the company.
Leesfield & Partners
Leesfield & Partners is a personal injury law firm with decades of experience in Florida handling cruise ship cases. With offices in Orlando, Key West and Miami, the firm has seen every manner of injury that can occur on a cruise ship. From negligent medical care to crimes aboard ships and onboard injuries, our attorneys work diligently to secure the best outcome for every client in each case.
As common carriers, cruise lines owe a heightened duty of care to ensure the safety and well-being of their passengers. This duty encompasses maintaining hazard-free decks, promptly repairing loose railings and ensuring that excursion transportation – such as buses – are safe and properly maintained.
Additionally, cruise lines are obligated to provide adequate medical care while at sea and to recognize when a passenger’s condition requires emergency evacuation. Similarly, they must take reasonable measures to protect passengers from criminal acts, whether committed by fellow passengers or crew members.
Previous Medical Malpractice Cases
While on a cruise ship, a 16-year-old Leesfield & Partners client was suffering a stroke. Despite her clear signs and her family’s insistence, doctors disregarded them on the basis that teenagers “don’t have strokes.”
Leesfield & Partners attorneys secured a multi-million-dollar settlement in that case.
In a medical malpractice case involving a 9-month-old baby whose meningitis was misdiagnosed by cruise ship doctors, Leesfield & Partners attorneys obtained a multi-million-dollar recovery. The child in that case underwent multiple amputations due to the doctor’s failure.
For a 72-year-old who worked as a nurse before her retirement, Leesfield & Partners obtained a $4.24 million settlement after a cruise line failed to test blood administered to her during a medical emergency. As a result, the woman was later diagnosed with HIV. The transfused blood was donated by another passenger.
Another woman, 65, suffered a stroke while onboard a cruise ship that failed to evacuate her in a timely manner. She was awarded $4 million thanks to the diligence and hard work of Leesfield & Partners.
The firm recovered over $3 million for a crew member whose arm was amputated due to the negligence and lack of knowledge of a cruise ship’s medical professionals.
A horrific example of a cruise ship doctor’s negligent medical care involved a crew member who went to the infirmary with symptoms of nausea. While giving him medication that could have eased his symptoms, the cruise’s medical staff ignored a black box warning label on the box that instructed them to give the drug slowly and inject it deep into the muscle. Instead, this staff injected the medication into the man’s IV all at once. He was in immediate agony, the start of an hours-long, excruciating experience.
Doctors aboard the cruise ship searched online for what to do. When the man was eventually able to seek medica treatment on land, his right arm had undergone severe tissue damage. In the end, it could not be saved and doctors had to amputate.
The man was awarded over $3.3 million at arbitration.
Previous Onboard Injury Cases
Leesfield & Partners previously represented a Canadian woman who was traveling on a cruise ship when she was horrifically raped. The woman was in her cabin alone when a member of the ship’s crew abused his employee status and used a keycard to access the woman’s room where he attacked her.
The firm secured a multi-million-dollar amount for the woman in that case.
The firm recovered $2.5 million for a 9-year-old who collided with an unpadded steel grommet while diving for an out-of-bounds ball as he played on a ship’s basketball court. The child in that case suffered a catastrophic brain injury as a result on the traumatic incident.
Similarly, the firm represented a man, 62, who was injured while playing pickleball aboard his cruise ship. The firm settled the case for $500,000.
The firm obtained a confidential settlement for a family devastated by the traffic loss of their young daughter. In that case, the child was separated from her family aboard a ship when she leaned over a poorly designed cruise ship railing and fell five stories to her death.
Bernardo Pimentel II, a Trial Attorney at the firm, is representing a woman who suffers extreme trauma and emotional turmoil after it was revealed she was one among numerous passengers, including children, whose privacy was violated when a crew member planted hidden cameras in their cabins. That crew member was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for producing child sex abuse material.
Previous Cruise Ship Excursion Cases
Previously, Leesfield & Partners represented a family after a mother and daughter bought a parasailing excursion while aboard a cruise ship. What should have been a thrilling adventure shared between the two turned into a nightmare while the two were up in the air. A malfunction with the excursion equipment caused them to fall rapidly toward the water. Tragically, the mother did not survive, and her daughter was left with a traumatic brain injury. The case was resolved with a combined settlement of $7.25 million for the families.
In another cruise ship excursion case, Leesfield & Partners recovered nearly $3 million for the tragic death of our client’s adult son. In that case, the young man was traveling with his family and ventured out on a cruise-sanctioned bus excursion. When the bus was involved in a crash, our client’s son was ejected and suffered fatal injuries, a devastating loss for the family.
A rollover ATV crash on a shore excursion caused serious injuries to multiple passengers. Leesfield & Partners settled the case for over $1.2 million.
Our 68-year-old client sustained severe injuries, including a fractured femur, when thrown off a “banana boat” during a cruise’s water sport excursion. The firm secured a $600,000 settlement in that case.
Ongoing Cruise Excursion Cases
Partner Justin B. Shapiro is representing a client injured in a jet ski excursion incident where a cruise ship tour guide negligently collided with her from behind, resulting in severe and painful spinal fractures.
That case is ongoing.
Mr. Pimentel is representing a woman in another ongoing case involving an injury she suffered while coming back to her cruise ship following a shore excursion. The woman tripped and fell on an uneven bridge on shore, seriously injured her left ankle, knee, arm and elbow, leaving her in a great deal of pain. She was able to walk back to the tender boat where she informed the crew she would need to see the ship’s physician.
No action was taken to ensure that medical personnel would be there to meet her when she arrived. She disembarked without assistance and, while walking up the gangway, paused to gather herself while in extreme pain. She told the crew she needed immediate medical attention. The crew, again, failed to provide a wheelchair or another means of transport to the infirmary. While still on the gangway, crew members approached our client and grabbed her arm. She fell to the floor in agony and was finally given a wheelchair and taken to the infirmary.
While there, she was diagnosed with multiple fractures to her hip and shoulder. Hours later, she was transferred to a remote hospital in Brazil and was left to wait a full week with insufficient medical care before she could be transported to a larger city and then to the U.S. for a full hip replacement.
She spent weeks recovering at a hospital in Florida before she was able to return to her home in another state.
If you or a loved one were injured while traveling on a cruise ship, don’t wait. Call a Leesfield & Partners attorney today at 800-836-6400 for a free consultation.
