Tag: lawsuit

Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP -- This week, victims of the doomed Costa Concordia Cruise Ship that capsized off the Italian coast in January filed a new Complaint against Miami headquartered Carnival Corp., the builder of the Costa Concordia, for product liability, against Carnival's Miami-based architect for defective ship design and against Carnival for a pattern and practice of concealing and/or delaying notification of life threatening situations to passengers on board their cruise ships, amongst other causes of action. Another claim, alleging wrongful death on behalf of several other parties, is to be filed shortly.

A recent court ruling in Florida leaves shipowners facing the threat of legal action from seafarers who feel that their working conditions at sea have contributed to poor health, both in the US and other jurisdictions, lawyers have confirmed.

Heidmar and Marida Tankers in court for failure to place armed guards on board Failure to place armed guards on a ship which fell into pirate hands has seen Heidmar and Marida Tankers dragged into court by two seafarers.Two assistant engineers from the 13,300-dwt Marida Marguerite (built 2008) filed the complaint in the US suggesting pushing the ship through pirate infested waters violated Jones Act rules.According to court documents Bahri Chirag and Dangwal Sandeep claim the vessel was not seaworthy as it did not have "adequate security, including but not limited to, weapons and non-lethal methods of resisting intruders".It is also suggested the vessel did not have an adequate security system and the crew were not given an adequate security plan.Chirag and Sandeep, who along with their crew mates were held for eight-months, further suggest negotiations with the pirates were not completed in a timely manner.The Merida Marguerite drama was one of the more high-profile and graphic stories linked to Somali piracy.Last month Mohammad Saaili Shibin was found guilty of hijacking the vessel. He is said to be the highest ranking pirate ever convicted.At his trial Oleg Dereglazov, a Ukrainian seafarer on board the Marida Marguerite, said the pirates had ...

Mr John Arthur Eaves hopes this case to force cruise companies to improve their safety standards

The suit calls on the court to award plaintiffs at least $10,000,000 A US law firm said Tuesday it is suing Carnival, the American owner of the cruise liner shipwrecked off Italy this year, for allegedly leading its designers to sacrifice safety for profits.The Eaves law firm said it was suing for punitive damages in California over the design of the doomed luxury Costa Concordia and hoped that a win would see all similarly designed cruise ships declared unseaworthy."This morning we filed a claim for punitive damages against Carnival and the architects who designed the Concordia, for purposefully ignoring safety to maximize profit," lawyer John Arthur Eaves told a Rome press conference.Eaves, who said he is part of a collective of lawyers representing around 150 claimants from the liner, said the ship's design was fatally flawed "because it was top-heavy and had a propensity to roll.""The sad tragedy is the race to build the biggest ship with the shallowest hulls and room for the most passengers. When will it stop? We decided we must file this complaint to stop a race which is destroying safety," he said.The firm alleges Carnival "controlled or at least heavily influenced the design of the ...

$500,000 for damages caused by MV CLIPPER ADVENTURER The Canadian Coast Guard is seeking almost half a million dollars in damages from the cruise ship MV Clipper Adventurer and its owners.The coast guard, through the federal government, launched a lawsuit on Friday.The ship ran aground near Kugluktuk, Nunavut, in August 2010 after hitting an uncharted rock shelf. The Coast Guard's Amundsen ship had to rescue the 128 passengers after the Clipper Adventurer's crew was unable to dislodge the vessel.The lawsuit says the damages are to prevent, repair or minimize pollution from the ship's grounding. The Coast Guard said that when the ship was grounded, 13 tanks aboard were breached. Some of those tanks held fuel, freshwater and sludge.Another Coast Guard ship, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was sent to the site to monitor the salvaging of the ship and the potential pollution from the accident.The lawsuit claims the rock shelf was a known hazard to mariners since September 2007.The owners of the Clipper Adventurer filed a lawsuit against the federal government last spring saying they should have been given more information about the hazard.Source: CBC

Company sent them into pirate-infested waters without adequate security Two seamen claim in Federal Court that Somali pirates held them hostage for eight months after their employers sent them into pirate-infested waters without adequate security.Bahri Chirag and Dangwal Sandeep sued Marida Tankers, Heidmar Inc., MT Marida Marguerite Schifffahrts and XYZ Ship Owner / Ship Employer on six claims, including negligence, unseaworthiness, and emotional distress. The men were second assistant engineers on the Marida Marguerite tanker, which is owned and managed by Marida Tankers and Heidmar."On or about May 8, 2010, the subject vessel was in the Gulf of Arden en route from Kandla, Gujarat to Antwerp, Belgium when Somali pirates hijacked the subject vessel," the complaint states.Chirag and Sandeep say they endured eight months of physical, mental abuse and torture while the owners of the ship negotiated for their release. The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires owners and operators of "vessels and facilities that the Secretary believes may be involved in a transportation security incident" to prepare a security plan "for deterring a transportation incident to the maximum practicable," the complaint states.But Chirag and Sandeep say the defendants failed to submit a security plan for normal scenarios, and ...

BP has subpoenaed the private emails of scientists who studied the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe, stoking fears of misinformation campaigns and researcher intimidation.The situation "should concern all those who value the principles of academic freedom and responsibility, and believe these principles to be essential to the integrity of the deliberative scientific process," wrote Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute president Susan Avery and research director Laurence Madin in a statement released June 3.On the same day, WHOI oceanographers Christopher Reddy and Richard Camilli announced in a Boston Globe commentary that they'd given to BP 3,000 confidential emails requested by the company in December 2011.BP hopes the emails will help in its ongoing legal battle over the exact volume of oil released by the blown-out Macondo wellhead in the spring and summer of 2010. The volume will determine BP's financial liabilities, and Reddy and Camilli led the WHOI research team that calculated the now-accepted estimate of 4.9 million barrels.Reddy and Camilli had already released "more than 50,000 pages of documents, raw data, reports, and algorithms used in our research - everything BP would need to analyze and confirm our findings," they wrote in the Globe. "But BP still demanded access to our private ...

Lawsuit against the owner and operator of Maersk Alabama More than half of the crew aboard the Maersk Alabama during a Somali pirate attack in April 2009 have filed lawsuits in Norfolk against the owner and operator of the ship, even as a new movie about the hijacking is in the works.The film, starring Tom Hanks and tentatively scheduled for release in March, will tell the story of Capt. Richard Phillips, who offered himself as a hostage to the pirates in exchange for the freedom of his crew and the container ship.The five-day saga off the coast of Somalia ended when Navy SEALs killed three of Phillips' captors in a volley of rifle fire.A fourth pirate had previously surrendered to the Navy.Though Phillips was hailed as a hero, 11 former crew members allege in lawsuits filed in Norfolk Circuit Court and in Mobile, Ala., that his employers, through Phillips' actions, put them in grave danger when the ship sailed within about 250 miles of the Somalian coast despite warnings to stay at least 600 miles out because of pirate activity.Together, the suits seek nearly $50 million in damages from Norfolk-based Maersk Line Ltd., the owner of the ship, and Alabama-based ...

Their captain ignored warnings to sail clear of pirate-infested waters off Africa More than half the crew members of a container ship that was at the center of a piracy drama off Somalia in April 2009 are suing for nearly $50 million, contending their captain ignored warnings to sail clear of pirate-infested waters off Africa.The lawsuits have been filed by 11 crew members aboard the Maersk Alabama, a Norfolk-based ship, the Virginian-Pilot (http://bit.ly/JsIQoz) reported Saturday. The five-day standoff ended when Navy SEALs killed three of Capt. Richard Phillips' captors.While Phillips was hailed as a hero, his former crew members allege his actions put them in grave danger when the ship sailed within about 250 miles of the African coast despite warnings to stay at least 600 miles offshore because of the threat of piracy.Phillips is not named in the lawsuits, filed in courts in Norfolk and Mobile, Ala. The newspaper said it could not reach him for comment, and The Associated Press could not immediately locate a phone number for him.Named in the suits are the owner of the ship, Maersk Line Ltd., and Waterman Steamship Corp. The Alabama company operated and provided the crew for the ship under a ...