Washington DC Cruise Line Accident Lawyers

Serious injuries deserve experienced attorneys

Cruise Line Accidents

Cruise Ship Accident Lawyer Services in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia

Cruise accident lawyers handle different types of cruise line cases. As the fleets of cruise lines begin to age poorly, cruise line accidents and incidents are all over the media. Individuals hoping to get a ten day vacation onboard a cruise ship can end up with anything from food or water poisoning, to slipping and breaking a bone, to enduring a complete collapse of the cruise ship’s power, sewage, and propelling system. Modern luxury cruises became popular in the 1980s, as a niche-market for people who wanted a vacation and enjoyed life at sea. Many of the cruise ships made when cruises first became popular, and before, are still in service. If you’re in need of a lawyer due to cruise incidents or any other vehicle, contact the automobile accident lawyer Washington DC can rely on. 

Most of the ships operating in cruise line fleets are aging quickly. If routine maintenance is skipped or done without the attention to detail that it requires, the ships can start to fall apart. Many of the cruise line accidents making the news today are caused by faulty or failing machinery.

Both fun-seeking passengers and members of the crew can get injuries while aboard a cruise ship. Members of the cruise ship crew can sustain work-related injuries such as falls, equipment-related injuries, injuries related to cruise ship accidents while working, and injuries related to being assaulted while working. See out the Workers Compensation Law Firm Washington DC trusts if this sounds relevant to you. Passengers can sustain similar injuries while on board a cruise ship, including slip-and-falls, injuries related to cruise ship accidents, or even assault.

Types of Cruise Ship Accidents: 

-Disasters: These types of accidents involve sinking, grounding, capsizing, collision, allision, terrorist and pirate attacks, pollution, crashes and killings on land tours/shore excursions.

-Mechanical: Accidents that can involve fire, propulsion issues and power loss.

-Sickness/Illness Outbreak: Accidents like norovirus/gastroIntestinal issues, influenza, Legionellosis/aka “Legion Fever”.

-Deaths: Accidents like man, woman or child overboard, a jumper, missing passengers and crew members, drowning in ship pools, critical traumas, murder, suicide, Myocardial infarction/heart attack.

-Injuries: There are times that rape, assault, battery, fractures by accidental falling/slipping happen on board.

Most Common Causes of Cruise Line Accidents:

-Rogue waves: a wave may reach a height of up to 100 ft / 30 m, and waves can cause injuries on board, like falls and can also cause people to fall off the ship.

-Hurricanes or Squalls: 10 heavy storms happen per season on average. A heavy storm can cause major damage. 

-Cruise Ship Fire: A total of 72 onboard fire incidents happened on cruises between 1990-2011.

-Cruise Ship Collisions: Six cruise vessels have sunk because of hitting the sea bottom, rocks and reefs or icebergs between 1990-2012. The most notorious cruise ship accident being on Costa Concordia, an Italian cruise ship that sunk in 2012, which resulted in 32 deaths.

-Cruise Ship Allisions: When a cruise ship strikes a fixed object, like crashing into a pier, crashing into rocks, crashing into a buoy. This usually happens during a docking or undocking move.

Cruise Ship Overboards:

Unfortunately cruise ship overboards do happen, some on accident, and some on purpose. 

According to statistical data, the average overboard passenger age is 41 years old. Interesting, most overboards involve males and the most common time for an overboard to happen is on the last night of a cruise. Most passengers are either drunk, on drugs, but not all are. Unfortunately, the survival rate is only around 22%, which means only 1 in 5 people who fall overboard will survive.  The longest time an overboard cruise passenger managed to survive (found alive and recovered) was 18 hours.

A factor that can contribute to a cruise ship overboards can be inadequate security staff and/or inadequate CCTV surveillance, a failure to monitor onboard CCTV camera footage, overserving alcohol  to passengers on the ship. It is important to be very careful about how much alcohol you imbibe while on a cruise given the unsteady nature of sea travel.

If you or a loved one has gone overboard on a cruise as a result of someone else’s negligence, you may want to contact a cruise line accidents washington DC lawyer.

Shore Accidents:

Cruise ship passengers may suffer injuries while on land tours or shore excursions. When this happens, the resulting litigations can be some of the most complex maritime personal injury cases. Cruise ship shore accident cases are very unique because they can involve foreign countries and foreign tour operators. This is why contacting an expert cruise line accident lawyer Washington DC can help you navigate uncharted legal waters.

Some cruise companies will argue if you have an accident during a shore excursion that they have no legal responsibility because tour operators are wholly independent. However, tour operators often have joint ventures with cruise ships or cruise line agents, earning big profits on the recommendation. If this is the case for you, you may want to contact a cruise line accident attorney to find if you might deserve compensation for your cruise line accident. Experienced maritime lawyers can successfully battle cruise lines to the basis of legal deceits, establish jurisdiction over the tour company, prove the cruise line’s and tour company’s negligence.

If you have a cruise line accident while on shore, a cruise ship injury lawyer can delve deep into finding contacts between foreign tour companies and the cruise line  to establish a court’s jurisdiction over foreign tour providers. Additionally, a cruise line lawyers can identify if a cruise ship line neglected to provide safety and welfare of its customers.

Our Cruise Line Accident Attorneys Are Experienced Maritime Law Specialists

If you or a friend or family member were injured by a cruise ship accident or incident or sustained an injury while aboard a cruise ship, you may be entitled to financial compensation. Injuries that happen while aboard a cruise ship, if the ship was not at a port, are generally subject to maritime law, also known as admiralty law. Maritime law is a body of law constituted by a combination of domestic law that governs maritime activities as well as private international law, which governs the relationships between private organizations or entities that operate ocean vessels.

Because maritime law is a combination of domestic law and private international law, maritime litigation can be pretty complicated. For this reason, maritime litigation should always be carried out by an intelligent attorney who has experience with maritime law. The cruise line accident attorneys at Cohen & Cohen have widespread experience in the areas of cruise line accidents and have partner firms who handle maritime litigation.

If you or someone that you care about has been injured in a cruise line accident or incident, get in touch with the cruise line accident attorneys at Cohen & Cohen today to get an estimation of how much financial compensation you or the person you care about could be entitled to. Maritime litigation can be tough to carry out so make sure you call immediately so the attorneys at Cohen & Cohen can begin your case today! Regardless of your particular situation, Cohen & Cohen has an attorney for you. Let our qualified, professional attorneys give your case their personal attention and see how much compensation you could recover.