Earlier today I blogged that the Italian judges released Costa Captain Schettino of the doomed Concordia cruise ship from house arrest. The judges also released him from the strict prohibition against speaking with anyone other than his lawyer and close family friends.
So by this afternoon we have one of Captain Schettino’s first statements.
Reuters is reporting that yesterday Italian judges released the captain of the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship from house arrest.
Francesco Schettino was arrested following his abandonment of the Concordia on on January 13th in a disaster in which 30 passengers and crew died and two people are lost and presumed dead.
The judges in
Tonight CNN will broadcast "Cruise to Disaster," a documentary into the Costa Concordia disaster. Here is the lead in to the CNN special program:
"What we found will be unsettling for anyone who has taken or is thinking of taking a cruise: allegations of inadequate safety briefings and chaos in the minutes after the collision
Following the Costa Concordia tragedy, there was considerable debate about where the survivors would file suit and what legal claims against the cruise line would be raised.
As we approach 6 months after the disaster, there is even more confusion. Lawsuits have been filed all over the place.
A group of New York lawyers
It’s approaching six months since the death of ill fated Costa Concordia. But it seems like yesterday that the renegade Costa captain crashed the $500 million cruise ship ingloriously into the granite underwater rocks surrounding the little island of Giglio, terrorizing over four thousand passengers and crew and killing innocent souls who were simply
Last night I attended a pre-game party for the Miami Heat – Oklahoma City Thunder basketball game at a friend’s house. One of the families was excitedly talking about leaving on Wednesday for a cruise to Italy. Other families began comparing cruise stories to Italy. I don’t talk "cruise law" during social events. I just
Cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein reports on his website that a young Brazilian woman working as an assistant waiter on the Costa Magica has disappeared from the cruise ship in the Mediterranean. She was last seen on Friday, June 1 but authorities were not notified of her disappearance until yesterday, Saturday. The Magica had sailed
Today is the 100 day anniversary of the Costa Concordia crash.
Things are back to normal for many people associated with the disaster. Carnival CEO Micky Arison is back to his front row seats at the American Airlines arena watching his professional basketball team, the Miami Heat. Costa CEO Pier Luigi Foschi is scheduled to begin to
The U.K.’s Channel 4 broadcast a cruise documentary tonight called "Disaster at Sea: Why Ships Sink."
"Why Ships Sink" examines the issue of passenger safety at sea since the Titanic. A film crew came to Miami last month and interviewed me and others involved in the cruise and maritime industries.
Unfortunately, the documentary
There is a lot of controversy today about the seizure of the Carnival Triumph cruise ship in Galveston. Lawyers in Mississippi and Texas who are representing the family of a German woman killed on the Costa Concordia filed a lawsuit against Carnival in Galveston. In addition to the lawsuit, they filed a motion to obtain
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I have been out of town for the past week with my family on spring break vacation, returning last night to Miami. But I have been my usual self reading up on the latest cruise news.
It seems that the cruise lines enjoyed a great time last week of self-generated good news. The Cruise Shipping
I returned to Miami from Washington DC this afternoon after attending the cruise safety hearings convened in the House of Representatives and the Senate this week.
These hearings were the sixth and seventh Congressional hearings regarding the issue of cruise ship dangers I have attended since 2005.
I met my friends and former clients in
Unlike the love fest between the Republican members of Congress and the cruise line representatives at the hearing before the House on Wednesday, the hearing before the U.S. Senate was certainly not warm and fuzzy.
U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, started the hearing off questioning why
Yesterday the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure convened a hearing on the Costa Concordia disaster.
As I mentioned in prior articles, I was concerned that the Chairman of the committee, John Mica, a Republican from Florida who is an unabashed supporter of the Florida-based cruise industry, would use the hearing as a
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The U.S. House of Representatives will be holding a hearing on cruise ship safety on Wednesday, February 29, 2012. The hearing will begin at 10:00 AM in the 2167 Rayburn House Office Building.
A subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (the subcommittee on Coast Guard & Maritime Transportation) will conduct the hearing and
At a time when Costa Crociere and its parent company Carnival are under the scrutiny of the international media, reports are now emerging that the Costa Allegra caught fire when the vessel was around 260 miles from the Seychelles in the Indian Sea.
Lloyd’s List states that the fire was extinguished. There is no explanation
Shortly after the Costa Concordia capsized, the cruise lines’ PR committee assembled to try and figure out a strategy to minimize the disaster’s effect on the cruise industry.
A decision was made for the cruise lines to issue a series of "talking points" to the media. The Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) and the American Society
Take a look at the photograph on the left. Can you identify it?
Nine times out of ten, I bet the answer is of course, its the Costa Concordia. You know, the cruise ship that crashed into rocks last last month near the Italian island of Giglio.
Wrong. Its a photo of the Sea
