WHAT IF I AM HURT ON COCO CAY OWNED BY RCCL

Cruise lines recognized it was not enough to sail from Florida and go to Caribbean ports or sail to Cozumel.  Each of the major cruise lines either owns or leases islands which are exclusively used by them. The following is a list of cruise lines and the islands over which they have control.

RCCL: Coco Cay and Labadee, Haiti.

DISNEY: Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay.

CARNIVAL: Half Moon Cay and Princess Cay.

NCL: Great Stirrup Cay and Harvest Caye, Belize.

MSC: Ocean Cay.

So what happens if I was injured on Coco Cay as an example? The first thing to know is this is an island that is under exclusive control of RCCL. A crew of RCCL employees remain on the island even after the cruise ship you were on leaves the island. Coco Cay is about 1/3 mile wide and approximately 1 mile long.[1] When a RCCL cruise ship docks at the island, some of the RCCL employees on the vessel get off the cruise ship and serve as employees on the island during the stop.

The reason it is important to know that RCCL employees occupy the island is for two purposes. 1. If an employee does something which directly causes injury to you on the island, he or she is an employee of RCCL. That is important for liability purposes for your cruise ship injury case. 2. All cruise lines hide behind the mantra of “we had no notice” of the dangerous condition—regardless of what the dangerous condition was. It is much more difficult for a cruise line to hide behind the “no notice” defense when its employees are present.

A third consideration here is that the islands owned or leased by the various cruise lines are within the sole control of that cruise line. This means if there is a dangerous condition on the island that has caused injury to a guest from the cruise ship it is much more difficult for the cruise line to blame a third party for the injury-causing condition.

HOW TO PROCEED ON A CRUISE SHIP INJURY CLAIM THAT OCCURRED ON COCO CAY.

First, it is important that a person pursues the case immediately if injured on a cruise ship or on an island owned by a cruise line. Your cruise ship injury case depends upon you proving two aspects: liability and damages. It is not legally sufficient to just say the injury incident occurred aboard the cruise ship or on an island owned by the cruise line, the passenger must still prove liability and damages. This means you are required to prove negligence on the part of the cruise line, and that the negligence was the cause of your injuries. For this reason it is vital to contact the cruise line and advise them of the injury. Not only is first contact of the cruise important but you must also provide a notification which states what evidence you expect them to retain. Cruise ship injury cases are won and lost based on the cruise line saying they never received timely notice of the claim nor of what evidence the injured passenger wanted retained. Conversely, when a passenger does place the cruise line on notice of the claim and then the cruise line fails to retain evidence, that failure to retain evidence can be used against the cruise line.  Just two of the many often requested items are game-changers in cruise ship injury cases: video of the incident, and the identities of witnesses to the incident.  The list of items one should request is much longer than those two; however, these are two critical pieces of evidence one should want retained in a cruise ship injury case.

Second, you cannot go this alone. You need an attorney and law firm who has specifically handled cruise injury cases. This is not a time to let a car accident attorney try to figure out how cruise ship injury cases work. The cruise lines all have in-house attorneys (i.e., attorneys who are actual employees of the cruise line) and whose sole job it is to fight cruise ship injury claims.  The cruise lines also all have outside attorneys and law firms dedicated solely to fighting cruise ship injury claims. Many people have called us here at www.888BoatLaw.com and apprised that the cruise line stopped talking to them about their injury case, and the most common reason the cruise line stopped talking to the injured passenger: the statute of limitations had passed. At that point the cruise line knows there is nothing an injured passenger can do to pursue a claim. Another reason to choose a veteran cruise ship injury attorney is that you can only make your claim in certain locations, and your attorney has to know the location and the process.

Third, the attorney you choose makes a large difference in the outcome of your case. Are you choosing an attorney who has years of experience handling cruise ship injury claims, or do you choose someone who has no experience at all. Cruise lines know who regularly handle cruise ship injury cases, and they know which attorneys do not have that experience. At www.888BoatLaw.com our law firm has been handling cases against cruise lines for more than 25 years. Another reason to be careful about the attorney you choose is that your claim is not governed by state law—even if the cruise departed from Florida, Texas, New York, or California, etc.—it is governed by maritime law, and most car accident attorneys will have never handled a case involving maritime law. Maritime law is the law that will govern your case and it is therefore critical that your attorney know the law that applies to your case. It is also critical that the attorney you choose has a successful track record pursuing cruise ship injury cases for injured passengers.

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[1] Coco Cay – The Berry Islands in The Bahamas