Carnival Cruise Lines could not have foreseen a sexual assault on a teenager, despite a lack of security presence at the time, the sneaking of booze on to the ship by an alleged assailant, and reports of more than 100 previous assault incidents on the lines’ cruise ships, a federal appeals court decided this week.
The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower federal court ruling in Florida that had dismissed the young woman’s lawsuit. The plaintiff was identified only as J.F., who said she was assaulted in a locked stateroom by three young men.
“The sexual assault on J.F., as she describes it, was both tragic and depraved. But the question here is whether Carnival is responsible,” 11th Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom wrote in the June 17 opinion. “We hold that it is not. Carnival—which oversees a vast fleet of ships, each the site of countless human interactions—couldn’t have known about or foreseen the attack. Accordingly, it can’t be liable.”
The case was a maritime tort case, but it could have implications for insurers in other premises-liability litigation that focuses on foreseeability and security protection at businesses with previous incidents. The court’s decision also found that when a corporation has previously taken corrective actions or has instituted preventive policies, that cannot be considered evidence of foreseeability.
“True, as J.F. points out, Carnival worked with consultants to develop assault-prevention policies, including a sexual-predator screening process,” the court noted. “But any risk of which this corrective action might have put Carnival on notice either is defined at too high a level of generality or doesn’t match up with the facts here.”
Each case is fact-specific, the court noted. Previous court rulings by the 11th Circuit have found that while previous incidents can demonstrate constructive notice for the cruise company, the court also has said that a cruise line’s duty “is to protect its passengers from a particular injury.”
J.F.’s attorneys had argued that one of the alleged assailants had been caught trying to smuggle a bottle of liquor onto the ship. Carnival’s policies call for removing such perpetrators from the ship or at least placing a curfew on the person, J.F. argued. Instead, the ship let the young man off with a warning. That served as a notice that having the youth on board was risky, the young woman’s team said.
