Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Authorities have recovered the body of a missing cruise passenger after she went missing on a hike last week in Juneau, according to media reporting.
The body of Marites Buenafe, 62, of Kentucky, was found Thursday by an Alaska Army National Guard helicopter crew below the ridge line of the Gold Ridge Trail. Buenafe, a doctor with UK Healthcare, a series of hospitals and clinics with the University of Kentucky, was reported missing to the Juneau Police Department on July 1 by family members. Her family told authorities that she had gone for a hike that morning and planned to take a tram part of the way up a mountain before walking to Gastineau Peak and Gold Ridge.
She did not return to the cruise ship that was docked in Juneau by its departure time.
An autopsy will be performed to determine her cause and manner of death.
With decades of experience handling complex and record personal injury cases, Leesfield & Partners understands that nearly any type of injury can occur aboard a cruise ship. While passengers are often lulled into a sense of relaxation, comfort and carefree enjoyment, injuries do not discriminate. Time and again, our firm has witnessed the devastating and unexpected ways passengers can be seriously harmed at sea.
Leesfield & Partners
Leesfield & Partners is a Florida-based law firm with offices in Miami, Key West and Orlando that handles all classes of injury, including medical malpractice, boat crashes and other maritime accidents, slip and fall and cruise ship cases. In decades of representing injured clients, Leesfield & Partners has been routinely recognized as among the top trial law firms in the U.S., with our attorneys ranking among the leaders in their field both statewide and nationally.
As common carriers, cruise ships have a heightened responsibility to safeguard the passengers onboard. This means ensuring that their decks and other common areas of the ship are maintained in a reasonably safe condition, that adequate medical personnel are adequately trained and prepared to treat the various medical emergencies that may arise, and that there is security and other safety measures in place to protect passengers from criminal activity.
In nearly five decades of personal injury practice, Leesfield & Partners’ skilled attorneys have handled countless injury cases on behalf of injured clients and grieving families. Whether injured due to the inadequate training of a cruise ship’s medical personnel, from a bad fall or from the negligence of other crew members, our attorneys will diligently work to secure the best possible outcome in your case.
In an ongoing case being handled by Partner Justin B. Shapiro, our client was injured while on a jet ski excursion. In this incident, our client — a novice jet skier — was hit from behind by the cruise ship’s tour guide who negligently collided into her, causing severe bruising and painful spinal fractures.
That case is ongoing.
Previous 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.
And injuries don’t just occur when passengers disembark from the ship. Leesfield & Partners has handled a wide array of onboard injuries that has resulted in long-lasting and painful injuries to our clients.
Previous On Board Injuries
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.
One tragic case handled by the firm involves the death of a young girl who got separated from her family while on a cruise ship. As the child leaned over a faulty interior railing on the ship, it gave way, and she fell several stories to her death.
Leesfield & Partners attorneys worked diligently to secure a confidential settlement on behalf of the grieving family and hold the cruise line accountable.
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.
Mr. Shapiro and Trial Attorney Evan Robinson secured a confidential amount for a woman who was injured after an onboard fall. In that case, the woman slipped on water that was not cleaned up by crew in a timely manner. As a result, the woman fractured her right femur and fractured one of the bones in her lumbar spine.
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.
Mr. Pimentel is also representing another woman in a case involving an injury she suffered while coming back to her cruise. The woman was returning from a shore excursion when she tripped and fell on an uneven bridge, seriously injured her left ankle, knee, arm and elbow. 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.
