This past week marked six years since George Allen Smith IV disappeared from Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas.
Mr. Smith’s disappearance, and the manner in which Royal Caribbean chose to handle the incident, brought much needed attention to the cruise industry. The events which followed Mr. Smith’s death led to five Congressional hearings into
A newspaper in the Philippines reports that legislation has been introduced in the Philippines to protect passengers and crew of cruise ships from sexual and physical assaults while at sea.
Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from Pampanga sponsored a bill which requires passenger and cargo ships to adhere to specific requirements to protect of passengers and crewmembers.
The legislation is patterned after the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Law
Things are suppose to slow down in the summer, but there are no signs of that yet.
Royal Caribbean recenty tried to muzzle a Miami lawyer who issued a press release about a cruise line case scheduled for trial in November. Gagging lawyers from talking to the pubic requires introducing substantial evidence establishing that the parties will not receive a
I have avoided watching anything to do with the sad case of Caylee Anthony over the past two years.
The image of the big brown eyed pretty little child, missing but then found skeletonized in a swampy dump, juxtaposed against the photos of her smiling mother dirty dancing at clubs have been broadcast, it seems, like 25 million times on cable news
ABC News is reporting that a chartered fishing boat with 44 tourists aboard capsized and sank off Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. A 115 foot long vessel called "The Erik" was reportedly struck by a storm and then capsized early yesterday 87 miles south of San Filipe, Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez
There are conflicting reports regarding the number of survivors. The
Happy Fourth of July!
Two hundred and thirty-five years ago – on July 4, 1776 – the Second Continental Congress voted to declare the independence of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain.
In the 1700"s my family’s ancestors got in a boat and sailed from Great Britain to the U.S. I have always thought about what that must have been
The cops in Bermuda love to bust American tourists with small amounts of pot, even if the pot never leaves the cruise ship.
In April, I wrote an article about Bermudan customs officers and police who boarded a cruise ship with a drug sniffing dog and found seven homemade cigarettes in the passenger cabin’s safe. The cruise passenger was
This weekend I ran across an interesting tweet "Scuttled cruise ship on Google Maps" from Brian Major (@cruiseprguy) who handles PR for some of the cruise lines. I could not resist clicking on the link.
His tweet linked to an interesting article in Geek O System about the World Discoverer, a German cruise ship built in
A fellow Miami lawyer filed a lawsuit against Norwegian Cruise Lines ("NCL") on behalf of a passenger who alleges that she was raped while aboard the Norwegian Sun cruise ship.
The alleged incident occurred in April when the passenger was participating in an NCL organized "pub crawl."
NCL employees took her and other guests around the ship stopping briefly to drink at various
Hawaii News Now is reporting today that an environmental group in Hawaii has located an illegal dumping site.
Much of the garbage and large plastic bags reportedly came from the Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pride of America cruise ship, including "paperwork, documents, and dozens of cabin cards with the names of passengers and the dates they sailed."
The Hawaii
Its never dull in the world of cruising. This week was no exception.
Our firm remained busy with cases against the cruise lines. At any given time, we and our co-counsel represent a little under 100 cruise passengers and crewmembers. New clients retained us this week after being injured on Carnival, Celebrity, Disney and Royal
Forbes is reporting that the Cruise Lines International Association ("CLIA"), the trade trade group which promotes the interests of the cruise industry, spent $490,650 in the first quarter this year, lobbying the U.S. government.
The cruise industry lobbied Congress, the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs & Board Protection, State Department, Homeland Security Department, Transportation Department, Justice Department on
A post by a cruiser on a CruiseCritic forum yesterday indicates that a cruise passenger visiting Bermuda was assaulted and battered in an attempted robbery last week.
One June 14th, a passenger from the NCL Dawn cruise ship was walking back to the ship around 4:00 p.m. from Snorkel Beach on what is described as a "relatively
Multiple news sources are reporting that a passenger from a Norwegian Cruise Line cruise ship went overboard in the Mississippi River last night.
The Norwegian Spirit had sailed for approximately three hours from New Orleans when the passenger went into the river around 8:00 p.m.
A rescue boat was deployed from the NCL cruise ship. The passenger was rescued and returned back to
Last week a number of news organizations reported on the story about the release of hydrogen sulfide aboard the Monarch of the Seas in 2005 which killed three crewmembers, injured at least nineteen other ship employees and threatened the health of thousands of cruise passengers.
We blogged about this disastrous event last week in our article "Royal Caribbean Demonstrated "Gross Indifference" to Passengers’ Lives." Our
Father’s Day is this weekend. This will be the first time in my 52 years of life that I don’t have a father alive to call and tell him that I love him. My Dad died on the morning of March 15, 2011.
My Dad lived 81 and 1/2 years. He was born in a
Earlier this week, we reported that the case against the Mexican man charged with killing Royal Caribbean crew member, Monika Markiewicz, was falling apart. A key prosecution witness testified at a hearing that police pressured him into making a false statement implicating Nelson Pérez Torres as the murderer.
In our article Is Alleged Murderer of
For the past two years, I have been interested in the use of Twitter as a method of educating the public about dangers on cruise ships. Dangers that are real. Dangers that the cruise lines don’t want the public to read about.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter is well aware that I tweet daily on issues that the cruise lines don’t
