Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Several passengers have been permanently banned from sailing with Carnival Cruise Line for fighting on board and throwing chairs.
A fight broke out on the Carnival Sunrise over the weekend as the ship sailed from the Bahamas, cruise media reported Tuesday. A video that surfaced online shows multiple passengers in what appears to be a sunroom throwing chairs and brawling while other passengers observed the chaos.
Security was quick to break up the fight. The cruise line has since announced that the passengers involved in the incident have been permanently banned from sailing with the company.
As part of the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) of 2010, cruise lines that disembark in the United States are required to report criminal activity to the FBI. In the latest available data, there have been seven assaults with serious bodily injury, one missing person, 10 sexual assaults and 23 rapes reported on ships from January to March 2025.
Leesfield & Partners
Leesfield & Partners is a personal injury law firm headquartered just 20 minutes from PortMiami — a location often dubbed the “cruising capital of the world.” With millions of passengers traveling through the port each year, our attorneys understand how hazardous modern-day cruising can be. As the industry rapidly expands, cruise lines increasingly compete for passengers’ attention with thrill-seeking onboard amenities like teetering slides, daring rock climbing walls and wave simulation machines. But, as ships become “floating cities,” the everyday worries of life don’t simply disappear with the horizon. Medical emergencies, devastating falls, and even crimes still occur at sea — and our attorneys have seen plenty of them.
If you are involved in an accident aboard a cruise ship, it is important to not move from where the incident occurred as long as you are not in any immediate danger. You should report your incident to a crew member immediately and have someone in your party photograph both your injuries and the area where the incident took place as soon as possible. You must also insist that the crew take their own photos of the area before it is cleaned up.
Request any documentation from the cruise line and their doctors if you are treated on board. These documents should include any incident reports, X-rays and/or doctor’s notes. Forward a written request for any and all security footage at the incident location and any surrounding areas.
Previous 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.
