Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Larger cruise lines are leaving Grand Cayman, an island in the Cayman Islands, off of their itineraries, causing a 25-year low in monthly cruise visitors, according to cruise news sites.
The latest data alleges that the Grand Cayman — the largest of the three islands making up the British territory — is experiencing a 27% dip in visits from April 2024 to April 2025. This is the lowest number in monthly cruise visitors seen by the island since 2000. This excludes numbers recorded during the pandemic, when the cruise industry saw a shutdown of operations to mitigate the transfer of COVID-19.
Cruise lines are choosing to skip this tropical oasis because it favors tender ports, meaning cruise passengers are brought to shore in tender boats. As cruise lines continue rapid expansions, it is unfeasible for larger ships carrying thousands of passengers to disembark using this method.
A dock that would accommodate these larger ships was recently proposed but allegedly was shut down by voters over environmental impact concerns.
Expansion of the Cruise Ship Industry
The cruise ship industry has seen rapid expansion with companies acquiring more and larger ships for their fleets and there is more competition to attract passengers. As such, these ships have built thrill-seeking amenities on board, with many coming to port equipped with rock climbing walls, dangerous wave machines and teetering slides. The larger the ship, the more passengers that can come on board, increasing the possibility for injury and other incidents with these amenities, on excursions or in the ship’s infirmary.
As a personal injury law firm with nearly five decades of experience these such cases, Leesfield & Partners has seen just about every injury that can occur on a ship. From disastrous slip and falls to negligent shore excursions and crimes aboard ships, this firm’s skilled attorneys have worked to secure the best possible outcome in every case.
Previous Excursion Cases
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.
The firm represented a family whose son, a special needs man, died following a crash on a cruise ship excursion. In that case, the bus careened off a cliff on a cruise-sponsored shore excursion. The son was ejected and died in front of his family.
The firm settled the case for $2,990,000.
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.
Previous Medical Malpractice Cases
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.
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.
A cruise ship doctor’s failure to diagnose meningococcal meningitis resulted in the multi-digital and foot amputations of an infant. Leesfield & Partners recovered $5.5 million for the family in that case.
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.
Bernardo Pimentel II, a Trial Attorney at the firm, is handling a case in which a woman traveling on a 21-day cruise ship voyage in Brazil suffered a severe injury while on shore. While returning to the ship, our client tripped and fell on an uneven bridge, seriously injuring her left ankle, knee, arm and elbow, which left her in a great deal of pain. Despite this pain, however, she was able to walk back to the tender boat that would take her to the ship.
She informed the crew that she would need to visit the infirmary, but no action was taken to ensure that medical personnel would be on the scene to assist her when she arrived. As a result, she was forced to disembark without assistance and walk up the gangway to the ship of her own accord. To gather herself, she paused while in extreme pain on the gangway and, upon reaching the ship’s security checkpoint, told the crew she needed immediate medical attention.
Again, the crew failed to prove a wheelchair or any means of transport to the infirmary. At this point, crew members approached her with one grabbing her arm to support her. She fell the ground in agony, causing the crew to scramble to finally grab a wheelchair for our client to be taken to the infirmary where she was diagnosed with multiple fractures to her left hip and shoulder.
A few 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.
This case is ongoing.
Previous Crimes on Ship
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 Mr. Pimentel, 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.
