Cruise Ship Sexual Assault BLOG

NTSB HOLDS HEARING ABOUT PRINCESS CRUISE SHIP TILTING
 

The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a hearing about the cause of the accident where a Princess cruise ship tilted or listed on July 18, 2006.  This is possibly a significant step in the resolution of this accident.  The incident occurred when the cruise ship Crown Princess left Cape Canaveral on its way to Brooklyn, N.Y.  This ship is owned and operated by Princess Cruise Lines which in turn is owned by Carnival Corporation which owns Carnival Cruise Lines. 

About an hour after the Crown Princess left Port Canaveral, someone in the bridge disconnected the automatic pilot system.  He then turned the ship and allowed it to list, i.e., tilt, to starboard, the right side.  This list was 24 degrees which is huge.   Imagine taking a 13 story building and leaning it over all of a sudden so that everything inside of it comes crashing to one side.  The list threw chairs, couches, ice machines, lamps, furniture of all types, glasses, trays, food, hundreds if not thousands of passengers and crewmembers to one side of the ship.  The people onboard were hit by and entangled with the wreckage.  298 passengers and crew suffered personal injuries.  See more information about the hearing and about the NTSB at www.ntsb.gov.  

Hickey Law Firm, P.A. represented many of the passengers who suffered personal injuries from this accident.  See our website for information on what to do in the event of an injury in a cruise ship:  www.hickeylawfirm.com.  See also www.cruiseshipassault.com.  The bottom line is get medical care immediately.  Take photos, and document and report everything.  This includes reporting it to the cruise line, taking photos, and going to your doctor and whatever specialist he/she sends you to.  
Also, CALL HICKEY LAW FIRM, P.A., TOLL FREE AT:  1.800.215.7117.  Our consultations are always free.  We work on a contingency basis.  Personal injury, wrongful death, sexual assaults, and medical malpractice.  This all happens on cruise ships and we have handled these types of claims for 27 years.   
Hickey Law Firm, P.A. is headed up by John H. (Jack) Hickey.  Hickey was born and raised in the cruise line capital of the world, Miami, Florida.  For the first 17 years of his career, Hickey represented the cruise lines and insurance companies.  Now he represents you, the seriously injured, the family of a loved one who has died as a result of someone else’s negligence, the victim of a sexual assault, or the victim of medical malpractice. 
Hickey is Board Certified as a Civil Trial Lawyer by The Florida Bar and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy.  He has been named by his peers as a “SUPERLAWYER” in the Superlawyer.com publication (the top 5% of all lawyers); as a “Top Lawyer in South Florida” in the areas of personal injury and maritime in the South Florida Legal Guide (2004 to present); and as a “Legal Elite” member in Florida Trend Magazine (2006) (top 1.7% of all lawyers).   He is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Emerging Leaders in America.  Hickey is rated A/V by Martindale Hubbell, the international directory of lawyers, a rating achieved by only 5% of all attorneys.  CONTACT US AND SEE OUR RESULTS AT:  www.hickeylawfirm.com and CALL US TOLL FREE AT 1.800.215.7117.    
   

STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS AND VENUE;
WHEN AND WHERE YOU HAVE TO FILE A CLAIM FOR PERSONAL INJURIES AGAINST A CRUISE LINE
 

It has happened again.  I got a call this last week from a young lawyer who blew the statute of limitations in a case against the cruise line.  (I am a maritime lawyer located in Miami, Florida and have 28 years experience with claims against the cruise lines.  For the first 17 years of my career, I represented the cruise lines; for the last 11 years, I have represented the injured passenger against the cruise lines). 

Anyway, this lawyer’s client had a slip and fall accident on a cruise ship and was injured.  The lawyer who called me was located in Miami but was not experienced in cruise ship claims.  He did not know about the one year time limit.  He dealt with the adjuster for the cruise line himself.  The adjuster kept writing the lawyer saying that the lawyer needs to send more documentation of the claim.  Then time passed and it was more than one year after the accident.  Then the adjuster said the cruise line did not have to pay anything because the deadline had passed.  That is called “Gotcha”.  Now the cruise line can refuse to pay anything at all.  And that is just what they do.    

I get calls like this from lawyers all across the country.  (I am a Board Certified as a Civil Trial Lawyer by The Florida Bar and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy.  I lecture on maritime law and on personal injury claims around the country and get a lot of calls from attorneys in other states).  I want to help them and their clients but most of the time I cannot if they have gone over the one year time limit.   

Here are the 5 things to know about any claim against the cruise line for personal injury, slip and fall, trip and fall, or sexual assault or rape:      

1.  When you are injured on a cruise ship, maritime law applies.  Maritime law is a specialized area of the law.  Maritime law applies to personal injuries on any vessel (like a cruise ship or gambling boat or tanker or freighter) on a navigable waterway (like the Atlantic Ocean, the Inter-coastal Waterway, any river, or the Caribbean Sea).  It applies to Jones Act seaman, that is the people who work on ships, and it applies to passengers on cruise ships. 

2.  Most lawyers around the country do not know maritime law and have little if any experience with it.  Maritime law is something most lawyers around the country do not do and do not know.  Most lawyers just do not know the law in this area.  They operate assuming the law is just like the law in New York or Illinois or California or Florida, or any other state.  It is not.  That can be fatal to your claim if a mistake like the one above is made.  That passenger will get nothing from the cruise line. 

In fact, most maritime lawyers do not handle claims of passenger against the cruise lines.    Passenger claims is also a specialty within the maritime law.  The law for claims of passengers against the cruise lines is different than the law for claims of the ship’s employees against the cruise lines.  In both situations, maritime law applies.  But there is a different set of laws which apply to claims brought by the employees (seaman) than for claims brought by the passengers. 

Many maritime lawyers around the country know about claims by the ship’s employees (called “seaman” even if the employee is a deck hand or an engine room cleaner or a waiter onboard the ship for example) but know little or nothing about passenger claims.  Not knowing the cruise lines and not being a lawyer who represents passengers against cruise lines can also result in you recovering a lost less in your claim.  Why?  Because if your lawyer does not know what he or she is doing, if your lawyer is not a maritime lawyer who takes these cases to trial here in Miami, Florida, the cruise lines will know this.  They will take advantage of this.  You may receive nothing as in the case above or you may receive only a fraction of your claim as the cruise lines will know who the experienced lawyers are. 

3.  YOU PRESERVE YOUR CLAIM ONLY BY FILING SUIT IN THE RIGHT CITY AND STATE.  Filling out an accident report and writing letters to the cruise line do not preserve your claim.  Writing a letter to the cruise line does let them know about you and your claim.  It does not preserve your claim.  If you filled out an accident report on the day of the accident on the ship, and if you wrote a million letters to the cruise lines, but you do not file suit within one year, YOU HAVE NO CLAIM AND THE CRUISE LINES WILL PAY YOU NOTHING.  This is not to say that you cannot get a settlement in the right case before filing suit.  Sometimes you can.  But you need to right lawyer in the right city and state to do this. 

4.  THE CRUISE LINES REQUIRE THAT YOU FILE SUIT AGAINST THEM IN A CERTAIN CITY AND STATE SPECIFIED IN YOUR TICKET.  This is called in the law a “venue selection clause”.  Buried in the fine print of your Passenger Contract Ticket, back many pages, there is a paragraph about where you have to sue them.  It is usually toward the end of the ticket.  No matter where you are from, no matter where you bought the ticket, no matter where you got on the ship, this rule applies.      

ü      In all cases against Carnival Cruise Lines, you must file suit in Miami, Florida.

ü      In all cases against Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, you must file suit in Miami, Florida.

ü      In all cases against Norwegian Cruise Lines, you must file suit in Miami, Florida.         

Other cruise lines specify other cities and states.   

5.  The right lawyer for your claim against a cruise line is a lawyer who is experienced at bringing claims against the cruise lines, who is located in the city and state where you have to file against the cruise lines, and who is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer.  If you have been injured on Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, or Norwegian Cruise Lines, you need a maritime lawyer with experience in passenger claims against the cruise lines and who is located in Miami, Florida.  This includes all cases of personal injuries, slip and fall, trip and fall, and sexual assault and rape.  Look for the one with experience (with maritime passenger claims against the cruise lines), location (in Miami, Florida), and Board Certification (as a Civil Trial Lawye

STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS:  WHAT IS THIS AND WHEN DO I HAVE TO ACT? 

I got a call the other day from an attorney in Pennsylvania.  He said that his client was raped (“sexually assaulted”) on a cruise ship and that she-the client- had reported it to the FBI.  So far, the client did what she should have done. 

Then he said that the sexual assault took place about 2 ½ years ago.  Oops.  I told the lawyer that the one year statute of limitations in her ticket (the cruise line “passenger contract ticket”) had passed and there is nothing I could do now.  It is too late to bring a claim. 

The cruise lines have included in the fine print on all of the passenger tickets the terms under which you have to bring a claim against them.   They say when (usually within one year of the accident or incident) and where (Miami, Florida if it is Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, or Celebrity Cruise Lines).   By the way, in order to bring a claim in Florida, it is best to contact a Florida attorney.  Each state licenses attorneys to practice only in that state.     

Then I asked why she waited so long.  He said that the passenger was told by the FBI agent investigating the rape that the statute of limitations was 3 years.  Oh well.  So much for advice from someone who is not a maritime lawyer.  (It is true generally that the statute of limitations for maritime claims is 3 years.  However, the cruise lines can limit that to one year, and of course they do in the ticket terms).   

This is not meant to be legal advice or to explain everything about statutes of limitations or something you can rely on to determine what your statute of limitations is.  To know about that, call a lawyer who knows about the field in which you have a claim. 

But here are some of the concepts:  The “statute of limitations” for a claim is a general term which means the time within which you have to file a lawsuit.  First, it is not always expressed in a statute.  Sometimes it is in a contract like a passenger ticket.  And there are provisions in some statutes, commonly in medical malpractice statutes, that it starts (“begins to run”) from when you knew or should have known about the medical malpractice.  This does not apply to claims for medical malpractice against the cruise lines. 

Second, there are different periods of time or statutes of limitations for different types of claims, and the statute can be different in each state.  Generally, for maritime seaman’s claims the statute is 3 years; for passengers it is 1 year.  Generally, in Florida, for general negligence it is 4 years; for wrongful death it is 2 years; for medical malpractice it is 2 years; for product liability it is 2 years.      

Third, the only way to stop the clock, beat the deadline, or as the law says “toll the statute” is to file a lawsuit.  The clock is not stopped just by reporting the accident.  You have to file suit.  That means that you have to contact an attorney in time for him or her to evaluate and investigate the claim and to prepare and file a complaint in court.  If you wait until the day the statute runs out or the day before it may be too late to do anything. 

The best way to determine the statute of limitations is to call an attorney and to tell him or her about your case.  The attorney will tell you.  Do not rely on someone else or the internet or this blog even.  Call the attorney’s office today.  You can call us here at Hickey Law Firm, P.A. toll free at 1.800.215.7117.    Barbara Hernandez, Karla Huertas, Sandy Talavera, Darby Mitchell, and attorney John H. (Jack) Hickey are here to take your call, get your information, and listen.  Thanks.