A Pittsburgh man pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old boy while on a cruise vacation sailing out of Florida. According to wpxi.com, Sherwood Stevenson, took the cruise vacation with the intent of molesting the young boy..jpg)
Stevenson, who was 71-years-old at the time, molested the young boy in a hot tub on the
Today I had the pleasure of visiting the headquarters of LexBlog in Seattle Washington. As many of you know, LexBlog is the company which provides the technical support for this blog. LexBlog designed the layout of Cruise Law News so if you like the design and functionality of this blog, thank LexBlog.
LexBlog does
I ran across an interesting article written from the perspective of a Mexican port which one of the cruise lines labeled as too dangerous to visit.
It seems like Princess Cruises has incurred the wrath of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico after the cruise line dropped the port from its cruise itinerary citing "continued violence" as the reason. USA Today quickly
The big news this week is the sad story of the sinking of the Bulgaria cruise ship on the Volga river. The 1955 era ship was considered a rust bucket. On the day in question, it sailed with a malfunctioning engine, listing to one side, and overloaded with passengers. When a storm turned the ship
We just settled a case we filed on behalf of a Jamaican crewmember who sustained a wrist injury while working as a cleaner aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. She is now able to support her two boys back in Ocho Rios (photo left).
Her job responsibilities involved cleaning every single public lady bathroom on
Yesterday I bought a Blackberry PlayBook. Small and compact and new to the market, the PlayBook is supposed to compete with the iPad 2. Its screen is only 3 and 1/2 by 6 inches. It has everything on it. I can blog, prepare legal pleadings, and email outside of the office. The PlayBook also has a camera
The media’s interest into the "missing groom" story was unparalleled in the history of the cruise industry. Royal Caribbean had been able to dodge bad press about the disappearance of passengers and women and children sexually assaulted on its fleet of cruise ships for decades.
But the case of George Smith was different. Every network was covering the
Last year I published a series of articles about how cruise lines mishandle customer complaints and ruin their reputations in the process.
Part I of "And the Cruise Industry Wonders Why It Has An Image Problem" series focused on the ways that Carnival and Royal Caribbean managed to botch customer problems and tarnish their images.
Part II took a
Two days after George Smith went overboard from the Brilliance of the Seas, the cruise ship’s captain prepared a casualty report concluding that Mr. Smith accidentally fell off of the railing. The official report did not mention any of the suspicious noises in the Smith’s cabin heard by other passengers or that other young men (later accused of raping a passenger
In December 2005, Congress convened its first hearing on the issue of the safety of U.S. passengers on foreign flagged cruise ships. The hearing came about primarily due to the efforts of several families who had lost loved ones from cruise ships on the high seas, under suspicious circumstances.
George Smith’s family was instrumental in bringing a great
CBC News in Canada is reporting that the owners of the M/V Clipper Adventurer, which ran aground last summer in the Nothwest Passage, is suing the Canadian government.
Adventurer Owner Ltd. of Nassau, Bahamas, is seeking at least $15 million from Canada, including $12 million in repair and salvage costs for damage to the vessel’s hull, $2.6 million for loss
One of the tests which Dr. Henry Lee wanted to perform during his inspection of the Brilliance of the Seas cruise ship was dropping a life size mannequin from the rail of the balcony.
A metal awning is located several floors below the balcony. It is around 12 feet wide and ran the length of the cruise ship
After months of silence, the Hagel and Smith families were losing their patience with Royal Caribbean. By Thanksgiving it had been almost five months since George’s death. The cruise line had released no information about the circumstances surrounding George Smith’s disappearance.
As soon as Jennifer Hagel retained our firm to represent her, we retained forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee.
Royal Caribbean did not permit Jennifer Hagel back into her cabin after blood was discovered on the awning below the cabin. No one on the ship explained to Jennifer that she had been found unconscious on the floor near a stairwell early in the morning, or that her husband’s blood was covering the awning.
Eventually, the cruise
Following Mr. Smith’s disappearance, the Master of the Brilliance of the Seas quickly concluded that his disappearance was simply an “accident.”
Royal Caribbean never told the families that there was blood on the awning below the cabin (which the cruise line quickly cleaned off with high pressure hoses) or that four men had entered Mr. Smith’s
George Smith and Jennifer Hagel married in late June 2005 in Newport Rhode Island. Their honeymoon was a cruise in the Mediterranean Sea aboard Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas, which departed from Barcelona to ports in Italy, Greece and Kusadasi Turkey.
Little did George and Jennifer know that these would be their final days together.
In the early morning hours
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While the city of Charleston South Carolina is resisting the expansion of the cruise industry into its city, the southernmost city of the U.S. may be heading in the other direction. Key West appears to be poised to accommodate bigger and more cruise ships, including the new mega ships the Allure and Oasis of the Seas.
The KeyNoter newspaper
Numerous news sources are reporting that a cruise ship carrying 173 passengers and crew sank in Russia’s Volga river today.
The sinking involved the Bulgaria cruise ship, which had 140 passengers and 33 crewmembers aboard.
To date, there have been reports of two confirmed dead bodies recovered and 96 people unaccounted for after the Bulgaria sank at 1358 local time (0858 GMT)
