Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Cruise ships leaving the U.S. have reached a two-year high, according to data from the Department of Transportation.
Allegations of at least 48 crimes were reported from Jan. 1, 2025, to March 30, 2025, according to numbers reported to authorities and published regularly by the Department of Transportation. Under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) of 2010, cruise lines are required to report crimes like physical assaults, rape, and sexual assaults to the FBI. Of these incidents, seven were assaults with serious bodily injury, 10 were sexual assaults and 23 were rapes.
Robert McDonald, a criminal justice lecturer at the University of New Haven and former agent with the secret service, told reporters with Fox News that having a number of people drinking alcohol in confined quarters, “whether that’s at a resort, whether it’s on a cruise ship” there is a potential increase for these incidents to occur.
Recently, dozens of people were banned from Carnival Cruise Line after a brawl broke out in a terminal while disembarking from the ship. In a video that surfaced online, passengers can be seen clustered together with fists raised, launching violent punches and kicks as security and law enforcement attempted to intervene.
At least 24 of these passengers were banned from sailing with the cruise line in the future.
Leesfield & Partners
From unsafe surfaces to botched medical care and criminal activity aboard vessels, Leesfield & Partners’ team of skilled attorneys have seen just about every incident that can occur on the sea. While many passengers are able to set sail on an adventure and return home unscathed, that is sadly not the case for those seeking the help of Leesfield & Partners. In nearly five decades of personal injury practice, this firm has secured numerous record and leading verdicts for injured clients and their grieving families. Our attorneys consistently display the compassion, knowledge of maritime law and tenacity needed to secure the best possible outcome for clients in every case.
With the expansion of modern-day cruising and the increase in annual passengers projected to continue, so will the potential for injury. As more people are on board, cruise ships develop more creative and thrill-seeking amenities and excursions become more daring to attract passengers, more injuries are sure to follow.
Previous and Ongoing 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.
In an ongoing case being handled by Bernardo Pimentel II, a Leesfield & Partners Trial Lawyer, another crewmember faced criminal charges for planting hidden cameras in the private cabins of several passengers filming both adults and children. The crew member in that case was later sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, however, for many passengers, including our client, the nightmare is far from over. Reeling from this incident, our client has been left with severe emotional scarring due to the actions of a crewmember.
Additional Cruise Ship Cases
In 48 years of personal injury practice, our attorneys have handled excruciating falls, delayed medical evacuations and tragic cruise ship excursion accidents on behalf of injured clients and their grieving families.
Currently, Justin B. Shapiro is handling an ongoing case of a cruise ship excursion that left our client with spinal fractures and severe bruising.
While on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, our client booked a jet ski excursion tour marketed to novice jet skiers. With limited knowledge on jet ski operation, our client trusted that the tour guides running the excursion had bene properly trained, however, this was not the case and one of the guides negligently and recklessly crashed into her from behind.
Discussing the case, Mr. Shapiro said this incident is not one you would expect on a supervised tour where the guide is meant to be a participant’s “protector.”
“Royal Caribbean advertises these tours as no experience necessary,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And they do that in an effort to sell as many of these tours as they can … What ends up happening, they have these large groups of inexperienced, unqualified people riding around on jet skis together. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
In another cruise ship excursion case, our client was severely injured and lost her mother as the result of the negligence of a cruise line and an excursion they were selling to passengers. In that case, our client and her mother booked a parasailing adventure while aboard the vessel. When the two were in the air, however, an equipment malfunction sent them both hurdling toward the water below.
The mother was killed, and the daughter suffered a traumatic brain injury. The case settled for $7.25 million.
Leesfield & Partners recovered $4 million for a woman who was further injured as the result of a cruise ship failing to evacuate her in the middle of a medical emergency.
For a cruise ship’s crewmember, Leesfield & Partners secured over $3.3 million. The crewmember in that case went to the infirmary with symptoms of nausea and was improperly administered medication with dire consequences.
On the black box warning label of the medication, medical staff was explicitly warned that risk of tissue damage could occur if the medication was not given properly. This is exactly what happened in this case when a member of the medical team rapidly injected the drug into the man’s IV rather than deep into the muscle slowly over a period of time.
Our client was in immediate agony – the beginning of an hours-long ordeal that would later cost him his arm. When the man was finally able to be evacuated and could seek medial attention on shore, paramedics taking him to the hospital noted that his arm was severely swollen, blacked and mottled from his elbow down to his fingertips. Doctors at the hospital were later forced to amputate.
