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Feature
March 2006 | Volume 42, Issue 3

Love boats on troubled waters

Cruise lines promise fun and romance and encourage partying aboard ship. When negligence or crime results in injury to passengers, what remedies does the law provide?

Michael Eriksen

In 2004, the North American cruise industry carried an estimated 10.8 million passengers on cruises worldwide, 8.1 million of them embarking through U.S. ports.¹ Cruises are popular vacation options, but when passengers are injured or killed on cruise ships, the legal options for recovering damages are hampered by evidentiary hurdles, procedural obstacles, and maritime laws that don’t apply to cases that arise on U.S. turf.

Florida is the capital of the cruise industry: Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises, combined, control more than three-fourths of the North American cruise industry and, like Norwegian Cruise Line, are alien corporations headquartered in South Florida.² Almost all major cruise ships sailing from U.S. ports are registered under foreign flags, so they are not bound by U.S. health, safety, or wage laws.³

There are no police officers or judges aboard cruise ships, unless they are traveling on vacation. There is no governmental presence, and therefore no applicable shipboard criminal statutes. The flag nation’s criminal statutes apply only while the ship is in that country’s territorial waters. Building codes, lawful drinking age, legal limits for alcohol consumption, and legal age for sexual consent—as those concepts are understood ashore—do not apply on a cruise.

The annual number of injuries and deaths during cruises can only be expected to grow as the volume of passengers increases.⁴ Typical incidents include passengers falling aboard ship after being served alcohol, disappearing from ships and not being found, being sexually assaulted by crew members, being improperly diagnosed or treated by the ship’s medical personnel (or, if the sick passenger is put ashore, by personnel there), and being injured while on shore excursions.⁵

What remedies do these passengers have? If you’re handling a cruise ship case, you need to know what obstacles you are likely to encounter and how to overcome them.

The Love Boat mystique

A familiarity with some key elements of the cruise industry can help you pursue justice for your client.

Sex and the floating city. Many passengers vacation on cruise ships with the hope of finding romance and intimacy aboard. These expectations, along with alcohol consumption and the general party atmosphere, contribute to a sexually charged environment that affects both passengers and crew. Numerous sexual assaults of passengers by crew members during cruises have been well documented.⁶

Some forms of crew misconduct may derive from their employers’ business models and hiring practices. Crew members live and work in confined quarters, are away from home for extended periods, and work long hours with little downtime, even during port calls. The crew’s alienation from normal home and family activities leaves many vulnerable to social entanglements with passengers.

Most crew members are men, who may come from areas of the world where the cultural views of male-female interaction and sexual harassment differ from those of North Americans. Some crew members may be culturally inclined toward aggressive sexual behavior or have a low regard for the status of women. Many—if not most—crew members alleged to have committed sexual offenses against passengers aboard cruise ships have been cabin stewards, bartenders, dinner waiters, or others whose jobs involve daily passenger contact.⁷

To deter such misbehavior, a cruise line must do more than write up a “zero tolerance” policy and pay lip-service to it. Criminals aboard cruise ships, like those elsewhere, commit crimes because they perceive a minimal risk of detection and prosecution. Some cruise lines fail to install sufficient surveillance cameras in public areas to identify and deter potential perpetrators. Other carriers fail to hire enough supervisors and security guards to adequately keep tabs on the rest of the crew. Some carriers fail to make it clear to crew members that zero tolerance also applies to crew-passenger contact ashore. Carriers also generally do not warn passengers to be wary of crew member misconduct.

Booze ahoy. If sex sells in the cruise business, alcohol really sells. Since all tickets are prepaid, a cruise’s profitability depends on how much money is spent on board. Alcoholic beverages typically are not included in the passenger’s ticket price, and they may be the largest source of onboard revenue. Cruise ships are designed to enhance alcohol sales—they have serving stations in every nook and cranny. Customer charge accounts may automatically be billed an additional “gratuity” of up to 15 percent of each drink’s price, which creates a financial incentive for servers to keep alcohol flowing to passengers.

Not surprisingly, many—if not most—cruise-related injury and death cases involve alcohol. In the cruise industry’s view, carriers should not be legally responsible for the consequences of serving alcohol aboard their ships. Cruise lines argue that, for purposes of liability, they should be treated like a convenience store or a corner bar on land.

However, these land-based establishments do not enter contracts of carriage for hire with passengers. Also, some alcohol-related incidents afloat, unlike those ashore, require voyages to be interrupted or other vessels to be diverted to conduct man-overboard searches and rescues or to deliver injured people to hospitals ashore. To minimize such disruption of commerce, federal maritime law generally has required shipowners to exercise reasonable care for intoxicated people aboard vessels.⁸

A Florida appellate court recently rejected a cruise line’s effort to apply Florida’s Dram Shop Act (which immunizes most sellers of alcohol) to a passenger injury case.⁹ The court held that federal maritime common law confers legal responsibilities on a cruise line to actively monitor alcohol consumption on board (to avoid over-serving passengers) and to assist obviously intoxicated passengers who may present a danger to themselves or others. Thus, an injury to an inebriated passenger aboard ship may now imply cruise line liability as much as the passenger’s own comparative fault.

Shore excursions. These off-ship forays constitute another leading source of cruise line revenue, from tour tickets sold aboard ship to passengers. Typical incidents ashore include vehicle accidents, drownings, slip-and-falls, and horseback-riding mishaps. Cruise lines have enormous economic leverage over competing tour operators in impoverished ports. To get cruise line business, local tour operators may be forced to agree in writing to insure the cruise line and to accede to U.S. jurisdiction and law for passenger claims. You should obtain the relevant tour-operator agreements from the cruise line.

The cruise line may demand and receive more than 50 percent of a tour’s proceeds. That and other aspects of a carrier’s business relationship with a tour operator may make the cruise line vicariously liable for the tour operator’s negligence.¹⁰ Also, a U.S. court may have personal jurisdiction over a foreign tour operator if it has significant contacts with a potential forum state or has agreed in writing with the cruise line to accede to personal jurisdiction there.¹¹

Initial considerations

Contract restrictions. Obtaining and reading the potential client’s entire passenger ticket is your first order of business. Viewable and downloadable exemplar tickets are posted on some carriers’ Web sites. But never assume that one client’s ticket reads the same as another from the same carrier—cruise lines and their lawyers constantly review and tweak the language on the tickets, to the potential prejudice of passenger claims. All cruise tickets are binding maritime contracts that restrict the passenger’s ability to sue the cruise line.

Time limits. Cruise tickets typically require timely written notification of a passenger claim within six months of the date of injury or death and require lawsuits to be filed within one year of the injury or death.¹² The filing deadline can be extended voluntarily by a carrier or its adjuster, and any extensions should be in writing. Never assume that a case will be governed by a state statute of limitations or even the general three-year federal maritime statute of limitations.¹³

Cruise line loss-prevention managers and adjusters hope that unwary passengers or their counsel will miss one of the contractual limitation periods on the back of the cruise ticket. For this reason, cases against cruise lines rarely—if ever—are settled before the passenger files a timely written claim and lawsuit.

Forum selection clauses. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cruise line common carriers may contractually dictate the geographical locality where a passenger suit must be filed.¹⁴ Virtually all cruise lines now insert a forum selection clause in their passenger tickets. Most, but not all, North America-based carriers require claims to be filed in Florida, where their headquarters, key personnel, documents, and lawyers are located.

Until a few years ago, all major Florida-based carriers gave passengers the option to sue in either federal or state court. Now, many forum clauses purport to allow state court suits, but only if jurisdiction is lacking in federal district court. The practical effect of such clauses is to require virtually all passenger suits to be filed in federal district court, because federal courts have subject matter jurisdiction over “any civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction.”¹⁵ Because the admiralty side of federal district court has no binding jury trials, the only injured passengers who can comply with such a federal forum selection clause and still retain a guaranteed jury trial are those who can satisfy all federal diversity requirements (including citizenship and amount in controversy).

However, federal forum selection clauses that force injured passengers out of a state court (jury) action onto the admiralty (nonjury) side of federal court clash with the concurrent state-federal subject-matter jurisdiction afforded by the Saving to Suitors Clause of 28 U.S.C. §1333(1), which has been interpreted to guarantee an injured maritime plaintiff a common law jury action.¹⁶ The enforceability of such clauses is currently being litigated against Carnival in a federal declaratory judgment action in Florida.¹⁷

The real issue is whether a foreign cruise line corporation, rather than the U.S. Congress, will be the final arbiter of whether state courts have concurrent jurisdiction with federal courts over passenger claims. One thing is clear: If Carnival’s and Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest federal forum selection clauses are upheld, the rest of the industry probably will follow. Then, virtually all cruise-related passenger suits will have to be filed in federal rather than in state courts, where the overwhelming majority of such claims traditionally have been pursued.

Provisions limiting liability. In 1936, Congress enacted legislation prohibiting shipowners from inserting certain liability-limiting provisions into passenger ticket contracts.¹⁸ This law should insulate passenger claims against most forms of “contractual tort reform” by shipowners. Nevertheless, cruise line loss-prevention managers and lawyers continue to insert new and more creative “we win, you lose” language into passenger tickets. In every new case, be on the lookout for ticket provisions that purport to restrict cruise line liability for passenger injuries, and measure them carefully against the nullifying provisions of the federal statute.

Maritime law. Federal and state judges hearing maritime cases generally must apply federal maritime law rather than state law.¹⁹ General maritime or “admiralty” law exists as “a species of judge-made federal common law.”²⁰ But some specific federal maritime statutes exist.²¹ Under the Supremacy Clause, federal maritime common and statutory law trumps any contrary state tort “reform” measures, including some states’ requirements for presuit screening of medical negligence cases.²² However, noncontradictory state law may supplement federal maritime law in a state court or federal diversity case.²³

Alleged negligence by carriers or crew is generally subject, at a minimum, to a “reasonable care under the circumstances” standard, although a cruise line’s status as a common carrier ought to imply a higher—if not the highest—standard of care.²⁴ Under federal maritime common law, shipowners are subject to full joint and several liability; and negligence, if any, by an injured passenger is a comparative rather than a complete defense to liability.²⁵

Maritime common law generally affords a full range of economic and noneconomic damages for personal injuries.²⁶ However, most jurisdictions do not allow maritime claims for loss of consortium.²⁷ Carriers may be liable for injuries occurring off the ship that are connected with ship operations.²⁸

Intentional torts by crew members

Under both federal maritime common law and nonconflicting Florida common law, shipowners are subject to absolute vicarious (strict) liability for intentional torts committed against passengers by crew members “in the service of the ship” during a cruise.²⁹ Such misconduct breaches the duty of safe carriage that is implied in every passenger ticket contract.³⁰ That an employee committed a crime or otherwise acted outside the scope of employment is no defense.³¹

“[I]n the service of the ship” is a much broader legal concept than land-based “course of employment.”³² The Eleventh Circuit recently held that a cruise line could be strictly liable for a crew member’s rape of a passenger during a port call in Bermuda, across the street from the ship and when the crew member was off duty.³³

Cruise line defendants have argued that carrier liability rules should not apply to certain independent contractor “rent-a-crew” members whose shoreside employers are not common carriers.³⁴ But these workers still are crew members of the ship who are subject to the discipline of the carrier’s senior shipboard officers. A shipowner’s core responsibilities generally are nondelegable.³⁵

Some ships, by design or neglect, have allowed miscreant crew members to simply leave. In any event, crew member perpetrators of intentional torts on the high seas may not be subject to personal jurisdiction or process in U.S. civil courts.³⁶ Thus, the actual perpetrators probably won’t be around to testify. So if intentionally injured passenger-plaintiffs were limited solely to a negligence theory against the carrier, they would have to rely mostly on the carrier itself for proof.

The same plaintiffs, if injured almost anywhere else, could freely obtain information about the incident from local police or other independent first responders. But early shipboard investigations are typically conducted by cruise line defendants, who invariably (and often successfully) claim the fruits of the investigations to be privileged.³⁷

As a matter of policy, passengers who are intentionally harmed by crew members but cannot prove shipowner negligence should not be denied a remedy. The current majority rule of absolute vicarious liability for intentional crew misconduct properly allocates the risk of passengers being intentionally injured by crew members to the carriers, who should be ultimately responsible for hiring decisions (even if they let others make them). The carriers set up working conditions for the crew and are in a far better position than passenger-victims to absorb the losses and distribute them through prices, rates, or liability insurance.

Cruise line defendants usually try to characterize a cruise ship as a “floating resort” rather than a ship. Strict liability, they say, should be limited to “uniquely maritime” dangers, rather than extended to shipboard events that also can occur on shore. Under this tortured reasoning, a maritime carrier presumably could be more liable if a crew member threw a passenger overboard than if he beat, shot, stabbed, or raped her.

Courts ought to reject this theory, if only to discourage endless, hypertechnical litigation over what is or is not a “uniquely maritime” danger. Trial lawyers representing injured passengers must never let the court lose sight of the fact that a cruise liner is, first and foremost, a ship in navigation and a maritime point-to-point common carrier of passengers.

Case investigation

Ship personnel. Contemporaneous investigations, if any, of shipboard incidents normally are carried out by the ship’s security detail. Most ships have a security chief, assistant security chief, and at least eight ordinary security guards. These workers typically are organized into three eight-hour shifts, so there may be only three or four guards on duty for a ship carrying more than 2,500 passengers and crew. Some ship security guards have no law enforcement experience.

Frequent transfers of crew and security guards remove much institutional memory from individual ships. The current ship’s officers and security personnel may not even know that a crew member was a miscreant on a previous ship.

Some crew members charged with directly investigating crimes aboard cruise ships may themselves possess insufficient English language skills to communicate adequately with passengers during an investigation, let alone with other foreign crew members whose native languages may differ from theirs.

When shipboard investigations are conducted, they tend to be superficial. Ship personnel—who may be in consultation with the carrier’s loss-prevention managers—may gather sketchy handwritten statements of some but not all witnesses. Security guards may prepare their own individual reports. The ship’s security chief or assistant may prepare an investigative summary for the home office. Security personnel rarely use audiotapes, cameras, or videotapes, and crime or accident scenes are rarely secured for long, if at all.

Medical personnel who treat injured passengers usually prepare bare-bones medical charts, but later they may draft far more detailed “medical incident reports” for the home office. Medical staff may use rape kits on sexual assault victims, but ship personnel often seem oblivious to the need to take simple saliva samples from suspected perpetrators, even though warrants generally are not required aboard foreign-flagged vessels.

Cruise lines often send shore-based attorneys to ships before the end of the cruise to coordinate the carrier’s investigation. These “sea lawyers” are sometimes accompanied by court reporters and videographers. They may take sworn statements from witnesses, including unrepresented injury victims. They may conduct video surveillance and may even attempt to settle claims with unrepresented, injured passengers.

Cruise lines use these lawyers to confer attorney-client and work-product privileges on the investigation. However, any failures by sea lawyers to secure material evidence aboard ship can lend extra weight to later spoliation motions against the defendant.

These lawyers may end up defending the cruise line if a lawsuit results from the incident. As possible material witnesses, they may be disqualified from acting as trial counsel, and you should try to depose them.

In discovery, the cruise line usually will freely provide the plaintiff’s statement and medical chart, and relevant portions of the ship’s logbooks. But they often claim everything else is privileged. Materials prepared for business purposes other than litigation may not be privileged, however. Even work product may be discoverable if there is no other way to get the same information, such as facts recorded by crew members or medical staff who have permanently “signed off” from employment with the ship.

Aside from ships’ logs, cruise line records usually reside in the file cabinets and hard drives of the home-office departments to which corresponding shipboard departments report. For example, the purser’s (customer relations) department may record electronically, and transmit to its home-office counterpart, the details of every significant passenger contact, complaint, and incident that occurs during a particular cruise.

Ship security personnel may be required to indicate on security reports to the home office whether an event is “alcohol-related.” You should look into whether, and to what extent, a carrier gathers and analyzes such data.

Cruise line loss-prevention departments ashore usually keep track of the number of high-profile incidents (such as sexual assaults) that occur repeatedly aboard vessels, and the details surrounding them. In response to interrogatories in passenger lawsuits, they routinely must divulge information on “other similar incidents” that occurred over the previous three to five years.

Cruise lines retain individual passengers’ charge account records, which may reflect the date, time, and location a drink was charged to that account anywhere on the ship. Also, the ship often retains individual bar slips for a few weeks after a cruise. These slips may identify the server and the type of drink (and thus, its alcohol content). Some drinking areas aboard ship, such as casinos, may be under continual video surveillance, but surveillance tapes are usually recorded over within a few days. You should immediately demand in writing that the cruise line preserve such evidence. Seek a preliminary injunction to force the cruise line to do so if necessary.

The FBI. Increasingly, carriers notify FBI field offices in home ports when shipboard crimes occur against U.S. citizens. Federal authorities have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute serious crimes against citizens on the high seas, even if the perpetrators are foreign nationals.³⁸ But law enforcement authorities of individual states and other countries rarely have the jurisdiction or desire to get involved.

However, FBI agents may not even reach the ship until it returns to its port of embarkation, and federal authorities sometimes lose interest in “he-says, she-says” cases (which describes many shipboard sexual assaults and other crimes). This underscores deficiencies in cruise lines’ early shipboard investigations. Criminal authorities’ decisions to terminate investigations for “insufficient evidence” or not to prosecute should be excluded from evidence via an appropriate motion in limine.³⁹

If the FBI does investigate, getting the results may not be easy. Since September 11, 2001, a few FBI field offices have refused to turn over photographs, witness statements, and DNA materials from a closed case, even when presented with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. And when such materials are released, they often are so heavily redacted as to be unreadable, let alone useful. You should counter such recalcitrance by federal employees with the 2004 federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which gives victims a legally enforceable right “to be treated with fairness” by prosecutorial authorities.⁴⁰

The Privacy Act of 1974⁴¹ may be a better tool than FOIA to secure unredacted federal investigative materials. File a motion for an order under the Privacy Act compelling production of specified contents of the FBI files. The motion (and notice of hearing, if any) should be served on the relevant FBI district counsel, who may not even respond. Any resulting order compelling disclosure of FBI materials under the Privacy Act should be served with a subpoena duces tecum on the special agent in charge of the relevant FBI field office. This strategy has usually (but not always) been effective, in this author’s experience.

State court orders and subpoenas, unlike their federal court counterparts, probably are not enforceable under the Privacy Act against a federal agency like the FBI.⁴² Therefore, the need for federal investigative materials may be a sufficient reason to sue a cruise line in federal court rather than in state court, all other things (such as availability of a jury trial) being equal.

Pursuing a case against a cruise line can be difficult. The defendants and their experienced counsel work overtime to throw up obstacles to litigation. But an injured passenger should not be denied a remedy simply because he or she happened to be aboard a cruise ship when the incident occurred.

Michael Eriksen is a partner with Romano, Eriksen & Cronin in West Palm Beach, Florida. He may be contacted by e-mail at mde@travelaw.com.

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Notes

1. Int’l Council of Cruise Lines, The Contribution of the North American Cruise Industry to the U.S. Economy in 2004, tbl. es-3, at 7 (2005), available at www.iccl.org/resources/2004_economic_study.pdf (last visited Jan. 25, 2006).
2. Id. at 39.
3. Douglas Frantz, Sovereign Islands: A Special Report: On Cruise Ships, Silence Shrouds Crimes, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 16, 1998, at A1; Douglas Frantz, Sovereign Islands: A Special Report: Getting Sick on the High Seas: A Question of Accountability, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 31, 1999, at A1.
4. See Teresa Anderson, Cruise Control, SECURITY MGMT., Mar. 2000 (likening cruise ships to “floating cities”), available at www.securitymanagement.com/library/000812.html (last visited Jan. 25, 2006).
5. See Wallis v. Princess Cruises, Inc., 306 F.3d 827 (9th Cir. 2002) (passenger fell overboard); Hall v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 888 So. 2d 654 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2004) (alcohol-related fall), cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 2906 (2005); Carlisle v. Carnival Corp., 864 So. 2d 1 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003) (malpractice by ship’s doctor), review granted, 904 So. 2d 430 (Fla. 2005); Nadeau v. Costley, 634 So. 2d 649 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1994) (per curiam) (passenger sexually assaulted by crew member).
6. See Frantz, supra note 3.
7. See, e.g., Doe v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 394 F.3d 891 (11th Cir. 2004) (dinner waiter), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 548 (2005); Morton v. De Oliveira, 984 F.2d 289 (9th Cir.) (dinner waiter), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 907 (1993); York v. Commodore Cruise Line, Ltd., 863 F. Supp. 159 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) (cabin steward); Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. v. Doe, 767 So. 2d 626 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2000) (bartender).
8. See Olsen v. N.Y. Cent. R.R. Co., 341 F.2d 233, 234 (2d Cir. 1965); Holmes v. Or. & Cal. Ry. Co., 5 F. 523, 539 (D. Or. 1881); Guinn v. Commodore Cruise Line, Ltd., No. 94 Civ. 5890, 1997 WL 164290 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 7, 1997).
9. Hall, 888 So. 2d 654.
10. Taylor v. Costa Lines, Inc., 441 F. Supp. 783 (E.D. Pa. 1977). But see Henderson v. Carnival Corp., 125 F. Supp. 2d 1375 (S.D. Fla. 2000).
11. Compare Universal Caribbean Establishment v. Bard, 543 So. 2d 447 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1989) (finding sufficient contact to establish personal jurisdiction), with United Shipping Co. (Nassau) Ltd. v. Witmer, 724 So. 2d 722 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1999) (finding no personal jurisdiction).
12. Carriers are statutorily precluded from inserting shorter contractual limitation periods. 46 App. U.S.C. §183b(a) (2000).
13. 46 App. U.S.C. §763a (2000).
14. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Shute, 499 U.S. 585 (1991).
15. 28 U.S.C. §1333 (1) (2000).
16. Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc., 531 U.S. 438, 454 (2001).
17. Barry v. Carnival Corp., No. 05-22551 CIV(S.D. Fla. filed Sept. 22, 2005).
18. 46 App. U.S.C. §183c(a) (2000).
19. Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 628 (1959).
20. Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A. v. Calhoun, 516 U.S. 199, 206 (1996).
21. See generally Title 46 U.S.C. (“Shipping”).
22. See, e.g., Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. v. Sinclair, 808 So. 2d 233 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2002) (per curiam); Beckman v. Rick’s Watercraft Rentals, 719 So. 2d 1025 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998); Flying Boat, Inc. v. Alberto, 723 So. 2d 866 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998).
23. See, e.g., Norwegian Cruise Lines, Ltd. v. Zareno, 712 So. 2d 791 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998).
24. Compare Keefe v. Bahama Cruise Line, Inc., 867 F.2d 1318, 1321-22 (11th Cir. 1989) (per curiam) (applying higher standard of care), with Rindfleisch v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 498 So. 2d 488, 490-91 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1986) (citing Rainey v. Pacquet Cruises, Inc., 709 F.2d 169, 170-71 (2d Cir. 1983), in applying reasonable care standard).
25. See Coats v. Penrod Drilling Corp., 61 F.3d 1113 (5th Cir. 1995) (en banc); Carey v. Bahamas Cruise Lines, 864 F.2d 201, 207 (1st Cir. 1988).
26. See Schwartz v. Neches-Gulf Marine, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 2d 698 (S.D. Tex. 1999) (seaman case).
27. See, e.g., Frango v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 891 So. 2d 1208, 1210-11 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2005) (denying loss of consortium and rejecting Wartman v. Commodore Cruise Line, Ltd., 100 F.3d 943 (2d Cir. 1996)).
28. Compare Samuelov v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 870 So. 2d 853 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003) (finding potential liability), and Carlisle v. Ulysses Line, Ltd., S.A., 475 So. 2d 248 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1985) (holding that cruise ship liability does not end at debarkation), with Henderson, 125 F. Supp. 2d 1375 (rejecting liability). See also Admiralty Jurisdiction Act (Extension of Admiralty Jurisdiction Act), 46 App. U.S.C. §740 (2000).
29. See, e.g., Doe, 394 F.3d 891, 913; Nadeau, 634 So. 2d 649, 652-53. But see York, 863 F. Supp. 159; Jaffess v. Home Lines, Inc., No. 85 CIV. 7365 (MJL), 1988 WL 42049, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 22, 1988).
30. Pac. S.S. Co. v. Sutton, 7 F.2d 579, 580 (9th Cir. 1925) (citing N.J. Steamboat Co. v. Brockett, 121 U.S. 637 (1887); Pelot v. Atl. Coast Line R. Co., 53 So. 937 (Fla. 1910)).
31. Id.
32. See, e.g., Braen v. Pfeifer Oil Transp. Co., 361 U.S. 129, 132-33 (1959); see also Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co., 318 U.S. 724, 726-27 (1943).
33. Doe, 394 F.3d 891.
34. See, e.g., Doe v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 287 F. Supp. 2d 1321 (S.D. Fla. 2003), aff’d, in part, rev’d, in part, by Doe, 394 F.3d 891.
35. See, e.g., Archer v. Trans/American Servs., Ltd., 834 F.2d 1570 (11th Cir. 1988).
36. See, e.g., Panchal v. Ethen, 648 So. 2d 245 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1994).
37. See, e.g., Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Doe, 868 So. 2d 1219 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2004).
38. 18 U.S.C. §7 (1994).
39. See Secada v. Weinstein, 563 So. 2d 172, 173-74 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1990), and cases cited therein.
40. 18 U.S.C. §3771 (a)(8) (1994).
41. 5 U.S.C. §552a (2000).
42. See, e.g., Meisel v. FBI, 204 F. Supp. 2d 684 (S.D.N.Y. 2002).

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