May 2010

The Orlando Sentinel reports today that a thirty year old Carnival crew member will be arraigned this week on allegations that he raped a 14 year old passenger aboard a Carnival’s cruise ship.   

Hery Krispiyanto, age 30, from Klitren, Yogykarta (Indonesia) worked aboard Carnival’s Freedom as a bartender.  A photograph from his Friendster page is below.

Leagle just published a decision from New Jersey which illustrates what can happen when a cruise passenger does not read the fine print in the ticket issued by the cruise line.

Costa cruise passenger Audrey Winograd sailed on the Costa Magica from Florida to the Dominican Republic.  While ashore in the shopping district of La Romana, several men

This weekend while cleaning out a file cabinet, I ran across an article published by the Miami Herald entitled "Lawyers Turn Cruise Lawsuits Into Industry." The article stated that between 2001 and 2006, over 2,000 lawsuits were filed against the Miami based cruise lines – Carnival, Celebrity, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean.

Cruise Ship Lawyer - Miami - Accident - InjuryThe article mentioned that

The Washington Post reports this morning that a fire on a German cruise ship at a port in western Norway forced the evacuation of the 607 passengers and crew members on board.

Peter Deilmann Cruises Deutschland Cruise Ship FireA rescue services spokesman says the passengers on the Deutschland cruise ship are being evacuated.

The fire started in the machine room and firefighters have now contained it to that area.

The Royal Gazette newspaper reports that the police in Bermuda arrested two American cruise passengers for a small amount of pot and a Taser gun in their cruise ship cabin. 

Passengers Virginians Kymberly Taylor and Shayla Reid were sailing aboard Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas.  After the cruise ship arrived in Bermuda, police officers boarded the cruise ship

A number of newspapers in Trinidad are reporting on the death of Michelle Samaroo of Arima, Trinidad and Tobago, who disappeared on April 26th when she traveled to Arouca to obtain a job on a cruise ship.  Ms. Samaroo had responded to an advertisement in a local newspaper and had told her family that she was going to a cruise placement agency. 

Ms. Samaroo

My article on Wednesday "And The Cruise Industry Wonders Why It Has An Image Problem . . ." contained the "usual suspects" – Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Carnival subsidiary Princess Cruises – whose shenanigans have been featured in Cruise Law News over the past year.

But right after publishing the article, I read a story in the Miami Herald’s "Action

A handful of recent stories have shed light unwanted light on the image-conscious cruise industry.  Cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to paint pictures of care free vacations.  But here are some stories published in the last few days which make you realize that the fun-filled family cruise may a bit different than

Local ABC affiliate WTVD News11 Raleigh / Durham, North Carolina aired a story yesterday about a number of families who traveled to Miami only to find that they could not use their birth certificates to board the cruise ship.

It turns out that Royal Caribbean recognizes only certain types of birth certificates as proper identification. 

Some passengers arrived in

The U.K.’s Mail Online reports that cruise passengers on the P&O Cruises cruise ship Artemis in the Mediterranean are "in revolt" after engine problems caused them to miss out on several ports (Valencia, Naples and Gibraltar) during the 20 day cruise. 

Artemis Cruise ShipThe newspaper writes that "angry holidaymakers have now set up a committee to represent the 1,200 passengers

An article in the Baltimore Sun entitled "Pleasure Cruise Bring Risks, Too" addresses the limited liability of cruise lines when tragedy strikes a family during a cruise.  Written by Frank Roylance, the article begins with the sad circumstances of Carnival cruise passenger Carol Olson who died during what appears to be a very lax, unsupervised and negligently