The lawsuit claims passengers were allowed to board a ship which had just housed someone with COVID-19 without being warned about it or protected from the virus.
An ongoing lawsuit claims passengers were allowed to board the Grand Princess in San Francisco despite it being known that a passenger on the ship’s previous voyage tested positive for COVID-19, leading to the death of a San Francisco man 14 days after he disembarked the ship. The lawsuit names Carnival Corporation & PLC, and Princess Cruise Lines, Ltd. as defendants.
Carnival and Princess, along with Dr. Grant Tarling, the ship’s Chief Medical Officer, knew or should have known that a passenger onboard the prior voyage was infected with COVID-19 and had been severely symptomatic for the past seven days while traveling on the ship, “resulting in the entire ship and crew being exposed to and [becoming] potential carriers of the highly contagious and deathly virus,” according to the complaint.
That passenger, according to the complaint, fell ill within two to three days of boarding the ship, and displayed a six to seven day history of acute respiratory illness while on the ship. These respiratory symptoms, the lawsuit argues, should have been recognized as possibly being COVID-19 symptoms, since several prior news reports had described the respiratory symptoms of COVID-19.
The lawsuit claims that the revelation that a passenger on the ship was displaying symptoms consistent with COVID-19 should have led Carnival, Princess and Dr. Tarling to warn passengers, isolate passengers and the public from a health threat, suspend all cruise ship activities until the ship could be decontaminated and disinfected, and report the sickness to a United States Quarantine Station. The complaint claims Carnival, Princess and Dr. Tarling did none of these things.
The lawsuit claims that passengers were invited onto the ship for the ships next voyage without being warned about the sick passenger on the previous virus, without providing and personal protective equipment such as masks, and without imposing social distancing. The defendants, according to the complaint, also failed to disinfect surfaces of the ship prior to boarding new passengers and departing.
The new passengers were allowed to board on February 21, 2020, and 62 prior passengers and 1,000 crew members who had been aboard the previous voyage were on the ship when the new passengers joined them, according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, according to the complaint, weren’t warned of potential exposure to COVID-19 until March 4, 2020, over a week after they boarded the ship. The complaint states they were scared of being quarantined on the ship since their cabin lacked windows and got all of its air from a central ventilation system shared by other occupants of the ship.
The risk of COVID-19 infections running wild on cruise ships should have been apparent to Princess and Carnival at this point, according to the complaint, which points out that another of the defendants’ cruise ships, the Diamond Princess, had been quarantined in Japan since February 3rd due to COVID-19. The news reported on February 20, 2020 that two passengers on that ship died from COVID-19, according to the lawsuit, which states that it was known at that point that 634 people aboard the Diamond Princess had tested positive for COVID-19.
The lawsuit notes that the CDC issued a media statement on February 18, 2020, regarding the Diamond Princess outbreak, which noted a “high burden of infection on the ship and the potential for ongoing risk.”
The passenger with COVID-19 on the previous voyage, according to the lawsuit, sought medical treatment from the medical center on the ship on February 20, but the defendants “took no action upon the ship’s arrival back in San Francisco the following day,” according to the complaint.
The complaint argues that the defendants made the decision to board more passengers on February 21, 2020 because onboard purchases make up most of their profits, “creating an obvious financial incentive… to knowingly board passengers on a cruise ship armed with a deadly and highly contagious virus.”
The complaint notes that Dr. Tarling has 27 years of experience overseeing 12 million passengers’ health and welfare every year, and is an “internationally-recognized medical expert in the cruise industry,” appearing to imply that Dr. Tarling should have recognized the risk that the COVID-19-positive passenger on the previous voyage posed.
The complaint contains an excerpt from Princess’ own website, noting that Dr. Tarling’s expertise “is routinely called upon… to help develop prevention and control measures to mitigate the global spread of communicable diseases.”
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of negligence, or failing to be reasonably careful to prevent harm from happening. The lawsuit argues that reasonably careful entities would have, in the same situation, warned passengers about the risk of COVID-19 infection before they boarded, gave passengers masks, imposed social distancing and/or quarantines, and properly disinfect the ship, claiming the defendants did none of these things.
The lawsuit claims this negligence directly caused the death of the San Francisco man, was “despicable, shocking and offensive,” and was done with “malice, oppression and/or fraud,” thus deserving of punitive damages against the defendants.
For more information on COVID-19 lawsuits in San Francisco, consult with Nadrich & Cohen Accident Injury Lawyers.
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