Cruise Ship Injury Cases

In this article, you will learn:

• Common scenarios in which someone may be injured on a cruise ship
• Common injures resulting from these scenarios
• How long you have to file a cruise ship injury claim
• Who may be liable for cruise ship injuries

We’ve seen different types of cases from cruises. We’ve seen elevator accidents, elevator cases where our client has been injured. It could be from a variety of different reasons; ours was basically the negligence; it was a variety of things in this case, but negligence of one of the crew members combined with some of the things that should have been working better on the elevator caused the issue. But you see slip and falls on cruises as well. Anytime you have a lot of people in a finite amount of space, you’re going to see those types of accidents as well. Another aspect of cruise cases is related to the excursions, because if a passenger books an excursion through the cruise line and the operator of the excursion is negligent, then the cruise line could be held responsible for the negligence of the excursion provider.

Typically, it more or less falls into one of those three categories. Also, on the excursions, you’re often in another country. So, you are talking about a third party excursion company in another country, but that’s why it becomes relevant whether the passenger booked the excursion through the cruise line or not, because a lot of times, if they booked it through the cruise line, that’s a way to get the cruise line in and file suit in federal court in the United States instead of another country.

Common Injuries Seen In Cruise Line Cases

Off the boat excursions depend on the type of excursion. We’ve seen bus accidents in the midst of an excursion from some reckless driver in another country as part of the excursion. So, in that regard, that was a catastrophic accident that led to death, but I would say the more standard types of injuries you see would be the ones you see from slip and falls or trip and falls which means it is wholly dependent on how the person fell. It’s really a wide variety, head injuries, and obviously concussions and traumatic brain injuries can also be related to slip and falls and trip and falls. So, it’s not really limited to a particular type of injury; it really depends on the type of accident and how it occurred.

The Statute Of Limitations On Cruise Ship Injury Cases

Carnival who has its corporate headquarters in Miami, each passenger that books a ticket signs a contract that says that if they have any claim against Carnival, during their voyage, that there’s a six month limitation in terms of providing notice to Carnival. So, you have to put them on notice within six months of the accident, and then you have to file suit within one year of the accident, and you have to file suit in the Southern District of Florida in federal court. These cases are very different in many regards from other slip and fall cases or other injury cases that are just happening somewhere in the US, because these are governed by maritime law. Maritime law is basically a combination of federal and state law.

Who May Be Liable For Medical Bills Incurred Due To Injuries Aboard A Cruise Ship?

The cruise carrier is always going to be the big elephant in the room in terms of liability. If it’s happening on their cruise ship, then most likely they’re going to be involved somehow in terms of being a defendant that’s being sued for negligence. Sometimes you may also have a third party involved in more technical cases, like if you have an elevator and there wasn’t proper maintenance done or something like that, and maintenance was required to be done by the elevator manufacturer, or if there was some type of defective aspect of the elevator.

For more information on Cruise Ship Injury Cases In Florida, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (954) 379-8030 | (786) 785-2555 today.