Cruise Ship Injury Claim: The Ticket Contract Sets the Rules

A passenger injured on a cruise ship is in a legal environment that the cruise line designed. The ship is usually registered in a foreign country, the injury may occur in international waters or a foreign port, and the passenger's rights are governed by federal maritime law, which has its own rules, and by the ticket contract, which federal law allows the cruise line to use to shorten deadlines and specify the court. The contract is accepted when the ticket is purchased and is binding on the passenger whether or not they read it.

The major cruise lines' contracts require written notice of an injury claim to the line within six months, and a lawsuit within one year of the injury, which is shorter than any state's injury deadline. They also require that any lawsuit be filed in a specified federal court, for most lines the Southern District of Florida in Miami, and courts have enforced these clauses consistently. A passenger from Ohio injured off the coast of Mexico sues in Miami, and if the notice or lawsuit is late, the claim is barred.

Cruise lines also include waivers for certain activities, arbitration clauses for some categories of claim, and limitations on damages for emotional injury without physical injury. Each is examined against the contract's wording and the law that permits or prohibits it.

The claim is negligence under maritime law. The cruise line owes passengers reasonable care under the circumstances, and the passenger must prove a dangerous condition existed, the line knew or should have known of it, and the line failed to fix or warn. That is the same structure as a premises claim on land, and the same evidence proves it: the ship's incident reports, prior injuries at the same location, maintenance records, crew statements and the ship's extensive video coverage. All of it is held by the cruise line and retained for limited periods.

Typical claims are falls on wet pool decks and stairways, injuries from defective doors, thresholds and furniture, injuries during embarkation and tendering to shore, injuries on shore excursions, assaults by crew members or other passengers, illness outbreaks, and negligent medical treatment in the ship's infirmary. Each has its own notice and causation questions, and the cruise line's defense is prepared from the ship's own investigation, which begins immediately.

The cruise line's medical staff is a special case. For decades cruise lines argued the ship's doctor was an independent contractor for whom the line was not responsible. Federal appellate courts have rejected that rule, and negligent medical care in the ship's infirmary is now generally a claim against the cruise line, which is significant because the ship's doctor is often the only care available for days.

Suppose you slipped on a wet area of the pool deck near a bar where drinks were served, fractured your hip, and were treated in the ship's infirmary for two days before being evacuated at the next port. You had surgery in Florida, with $64,000 in medical bills, and could not return to work for three months.

An attorney sent written notice to the cruise line within weeks and a preservation letter for the deck video, incident reports for that area, and the infirmary records. The video showed the area had been wet for over an hour with passengers slipping and no crew response. The ship's own records showed two prior falls at the same spot that season.

The cruise line's insurer argued the wet deck was open and obvious near a pool. The video of the unattended spill and the prior incidents answered it. Suit was filed in Miami within the one-year deadline, and the claim settled at mediation for the medical bills, the lost wages and the hip injury's lasting effects. Had the notice been sent in month seven, or the suit filed in month thirteen, the claim would have been barred regardless of the video. All figures are hypothetical.

The cruise line begins its investigation the moment the injury is reported, and the passenger has six months to give notice and a year to sue.

• Report the injury to the ship's security or guest services and to the infirmary, and ask for a copy of the incident report or its number.
• Photograph the location, the hazard, the lighting and any warning signs, and your injuries, as soon as you can.
• Get the names and cabin numbers of witnesses, who are from many places and will be impossible to find after the cruise.
• Keep every document: the ticket contract, the infirmary records and bills, the evacuation and shore medical records, and the cruise line's correspondence.
• Do not sign any release or accept any onboard credit or refund offered in exchange for one.
• Send written notice of the claim to the cruise line at the address in the ticket contract well within six months, and have a preservation letter sent for video and records.
• Retain an attorney who handles maritime passenger claims and can file in the court the contract requires within one year.

State law largely does not apply; a cruise passenger's claim is governed by federal maritime law and the ticket contract, and the state where the passenger lives or boarded is mostly irrelevant. The one-year contractual deadline replaces the state's injury statute of limitations, and the forum clause replaces the passenger's choice of court. Federal maritime law applies pure comparative negligence, reducing the claim by the passenger's share of fault with no cutoff, which is more favorable than many states' rules.

Where state law matters is at the edges: a shore excursion injury may be a claim against the excursion operator under the law of the country where it occurred, which is usually impractical, and against the cruise line under maritime law if the line controlled the excursion, negligently selected the operator, or represented it as its own. A claim against a travel agent or a port facility follows that defendant's law. Injuries on the dock before boarding or after leaving the ship may fall under the port state's law rather than the ticket contract.

Damages under maritime law for a passenger's injury include medical expenses, lost earnings, and pain and suffering, but the rules differ for death: the Death on the High Seas Act limits recovery for a death more than three nautical miles from shore to pecuniary loss, excluding the survivors' grief and loss of companionship, a limitation that has been the subject of repeated legislative proposals. Deaths in territorial waters follow different rules.

Shore excursions are run by local operators under contract with the cruise line, and the excursion ticket usually says so, disclaiming the line's responsibility. Courts have nonetheless allowed claims against cruise lines where the line marketed the excursion as its own, controlled it, or selected an operator it knew or should have known was unsafe. A serious excursion injury is examined on those theories, because the local operator is usually uninsured and beyond reach.

Assaults by crew members are claims against the cruise line, which is strictly liable under maritime law for a crew member's intentional assault on a passenger. Assaults by other passengers are negligence claims requiring proof the line failed to provide reasonable security given what it knew. Federal law requires cruise lines to report crimes against American passengers and to maintain certain security measures, and the reports are evidence.

Illness outbreaks, usually norovirus, are claims when the line's sanitation failures are documented, which federal public health inspections of cruise ships sometimes establish. Individual illness claims are modest; the inspection record is what makes them viable.

A cruise claim is a maritime negligence claim with deadlines and a required court set by the ticket contract, and the deadlines are the shortest of any injury claim. The questions to answer early are whether written notice has been sent, when the one-year deadline falls, whether the ship's video and records have been preserved, and whether the injury is one the contract tries to exclude. Maritime passenger claims are handled by attorneys who practice in the required court, on contingency.

Ask Legal Matters is a free claim-review request service, not a law firm. Requests may be shared with independent attorneys and legal services partners who handle inquiries in your state, and an attorney must evaluate the facts before anyone can say what the claim is worth. If you were hurt on a cruise, you can request a free claim review before the six-month notice deadline passes.

• Slip, Trip and Fall Claims: Premises Liability Explained
• Medical Malpractice Claims: Standard of Care, Deadlines and Damages
• Wrongful Death Claims: Who Can File, Deadlines and Damages
• Airbag Did Not Deploy in a Crash: Can You Sue, and Whom?
• At Fault in a Car Accident? Comparative Negligence Explained
• What Is the Average Car Accident Settlement? What Sets the Value
• Back and Neck Injury Settlement After a Car Accident: Factors
• Bicycle Accident Claim: Hit by a Car While Riding
• Broken Bone Car Accident Settlement: What Drives the Value

Need local rules? Choose your state from the injury law guides hub or read the statute of limitations by state.