Earlier this week, we reported on the arrest of former Cunard child supervisor Paul Trotter on allegations that he abused a child and possessed indecent photographs of children on his computer.
The British police investigated Mr. Trotter (photo below, playing piano on Cunard cruise ship) after the parents of a child, identified only as being
Yesterday, New York lawyers for Costa Concordia cruise survivors filed an amended lawsuit in Miami, adding 33 additional passengers as plaintiffs. The lawyers are seeking $78 million in compensatory damages and $450 in punitive damages for a total amount of $528 million on behalf of 39 passengers.
Although the lawyers called the original filing a "class action" lawsuit, the case was
The San Francisco Weekly Blog reported today that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) busted three cruise ship passengers in San Francisco with nearly 13 kilos of cocaine last month.
The CBP and local law-enforcement officials found two separate discoveries of a large amount of cocaine on a cruise ship at Pier 35 on January 25th after the
The Royal Gazette newspaper reports that a judge in Bermuda sentenced two U.S. cruise passengers to six years in jail each after trying to smuggle pot into Bermuda.
Bermuda Judge Carlisle Greaves sentenced the two female Carnival cruise passengers from Georgia, Alloah Releford, age 24, and Latoya Powell, age 27, for attempting to smuggle in 2.7kg of cannabis resin into the country.
The two
Several news stations in the U.K. are reporting that the police arrested a former Cunard crewmember on charges that he sexually molested at least one child during a cruise.
Paul Trotter, age 34, of Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in the U.K., is alleged to have abused the child between December 20, 2011 and January 5, 2012 while working
A number of cruisers have been contacting our office asking about a sickness outbreak aboard the Celebrity Cruises’ Constellation cruise ship.
The Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") officially placed the Constellation on its vessel sanitation list of ships with sickness. The Constellation sailed on January 28th from Fort Lauderdale and returned yesterday, February 11th.
95 out
A criminal trial against a South African man accused of raping a South African woman during a cruise ended when the trial court ruled that the alleged rape did not occur in the territorial waters of South Africa.
A newspaper in South Africa published a disturbing story about the defense raised by the lawyers for a passenger who
A newspaper in Australia is reporting that 16 cruise passengers, with ages between 18 and 23, were booted off the P & O Cruises’ Pacific Dawn cruise ship for fighting.
The incident occurred late at night, with some newspaper accounts suggesting that the men were intoxicated and fighting over a woman.
The Observer reports that one of the
Swamped from a tide of bad publicity following the Costa Concordia disaster, the cruise industry today announced a change to its safety drill policy. The new policy? Hold your breath:
All cruise lines will begin to provide a safety briefing to the passengers before the vessel sets sail.
That’s it? Why wasn’t this the law a hundred years ago, after
A CBS television station in California aired an interesting program this week regarding the unexplained disappearance of a young man from a Holland America Line cruise ship last summer.
Blake Kepley, age 20, vanished from the HAL Oosterdam last July during a cruise from Seattle to Alaska.
The disappearance occurred when my family was vacationing near Seattle. I wrote about the incident in my
Yesterday the Third District Court of Appeal of Florida issued an opinion which revisited the infamous "deep throat" case involving a corrupt claim supervisor at Royal Caribbean and a crooked Miami maritime lawyer.
The case is entitled Wingate v. Celebrity Cruises, Ltd. and is available online here.
You will recall that the case involved a local Miami
A blogger of international news at the Examiner, Edward Owens, published an interesting article today regarding the disappearance of a passenger from Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas cruise ship.
You will recall that last week, Irish cruise passenger Kenneth John Gemmell went overboard from the balcony of his cabin on the eleventh deck
Just when you thought this National-Enquirer-like story of the cowardly Costa cruise ship captain could not get any weirder, the Italian magazine Chi published a photograph of Captain Schettino and former cruise dancer/hostess Domnica Cemortan. It seems like the love birds were eating oysters and crab legs at a restaurant about a month before married Capitano Amore wrecked his cruise ship
In a responsible step to sanitize its cruise ship following an outbreak of what appears to be norovirus, Princess Cruises decided to end the current cruise of its Crown Princess cruise ship after consulting with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Nearly 400 passengers and crew on the last cruise became sick due to gastrointestinal illness, which is suspected to
ABC News reports tonight that over 30 cruise passengers were suffering from sickness when the Celebrity Silhouette cruise ship called on St. Maarten today.
Over the last few days, at least four cruise ships have suffered from outbreaks of illness, including norovirus: the Oasis of the Seas and the Voyager of the Seas (both operated
The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster fueled not only significant coverage by international newspapers and cable news programs, but also spawned an unprecedented look at the cruise industry by part-time bloggers and recreational twitter & facebook users.
I use a Twitter application called "TweetDeck" (photo below left) where I follow certain terms like "Costa Concordia" and hashtags like #Costa to stay ahead of this latest cruise disaster story. The
While reports of five hundred sick passengers aboard two of Princess Cruises’ ships sailing to Fort Lauderdale (Ruby Princess and Crown Princess) dominate the news here in South Florida, a newspaper in New Orleans is reporting that over 200 passengers were stricken with norovirus on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship this weekend.
This means around 700 people
There is a lot of talk in the media about so-called "class action" lawsuits, arising out of the Costa Concordia cruise disaster, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and other far fetched claims. Most of these exaggerated claims are being made by lawyers who have absolutely no experience handling maritime claims.
What is not being
