Coral Princess Permitted to Sail, Despite Covid-19 Class Action

In the Covid-19 pandemic, cruise ships were hit particularly early and particularly hard by the disease. The complaint for this class action alleges that the Carnival Cruise companies—which include Carnival Corporation, Carnival plc, Princess Cruises, the Holland American Line, Costa Cruises, and others—knew early on about the dangers posed to cruise ship passengers by Covid-19 and should not have continued operating cruises.

The class for this action is all persons in the US who were passengers aboard the Coral Princess for the voyage departing from Valparaiso, Chile on March 5, 2020.

Plaintiff Kathleen O’Neill was a passenger aboard the Coral Princess at its March 5, 2020 sailing.

On that same day, another of the companies’ ships, the Grand Princess, went into a ship-wide quarantine. A month earlier, as well, there had been a massive outbreak aboard their Diamond Princess.

The Diamond Princess outbreak occurred in February, apparently while the ship was docked in Yokohama, Japan. A passenger was diagnosed with Covid-19 on February 1, but no warnings or announcements were made on board until 48 hours later. The complaint says that “seemingly nothing was done aboard the ship.” No quarantine was imposed until Japanese officials ordered one.

Numbers of cases quickly escalated to 700, with fourteen deaths. Passengers were confined to cabins. Many food service workers became sick. The complaint alleges, “The disembarkation process was a chaotic disaster.”

In late February, an official for Carnival and Princess put out a video message saying that its ships would take temperatures of boarding passengers, give out hand sanitizer, and closely check passports. However, the complaint claims that these precautions were never implemented.

According to the complaint, the “decision to sail the Coral Princess with no precautions or extra sanitization measures in place after the outbreak onboard the Diamond Princess and Grand Princess shows the failure of [the companies] to take appropriate action, thus unnecessarily risking the health and safety of all passengers and crew….”

The Coral Princess was refused permission to dock at a number of ports. Plaintiff O’Neill and her husband bought several sets of tickets from different ports, hoping to be able to go home, but were not able to do so. Finally, the ship confined passengers to cabins, although they were given very little information.

The complaint says, “Instead of a first-hand look at South American ports, [O’Neill and other passengers] got a first-hand look at ambulance and morgue workers carting gurneys off the ship they were trapped on for weeks.”

They were finally allowed to disembark only on April 6. O’Neill subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.

The complaint says Carnival “did not suspend operations under all other members in Cruise Lines International Association (‘CLIA’) also suspended operations.” This was after WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic in mid-March.

The complaint alleges gross negligence and negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other things.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer, medical
Tags: Covid-19 Related, Cruises, Exposure to Disease