Cruises Industry Wreaked Havoc in Connection With Carnival Vacation Plans
In 2021 the lawyers of Washington, DC presented a case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which was related to a Carnival Land Management Company decision not to park cars on the road side of a United States federal highway. The road is near an international airport, and all workers, including the cleaners were ordered to vacate the area, which they had been doing for several years. The workers argued that they had been performing a legitimate work at that location, and that they were not in an area where they were likely to be ordered to leave by a federal judge. The Court ruled in their favor, and the workers could no longer demonstrate that they were exercising a legal right.
The problem with this ruling is that Congress has repeatedly passed statutes that criminalize this exact conduct, and these acts are referred to collectively as “textually defined unfair treatment or employment practices.”
For the most part, American labor law has followed suit with regard to such statutes. Thus, it is not uncommon for a labor lawyer to be instructed by the courts to represent a client who has engaged in such activities-usually referred to as “textual advertising.” Such lawyers are also involved in other litigation involving such industries as asbestos cases.
In this particular case, the workers were attempting to clean the interior of a bus station before it was shut down for lack of funding.
As it turns out, the United States Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Florida held that the cruise line’s cruise operator, Carnival Land Management Company, did violate the Florida Statute of Limitations for carnival lawsuits. The court held that the clause in the employment contract between the cruise liner and its passengers, namely that the passenger may bring a claim against Carnival under the theory of strict liability, and that this theory was properly applied to carnival lawsuits. Thus, the case was sent back to the lower court, and the lower court issued an advisory to the lower court stating: “The judgment of the court in the Eleventh Circuit on this question of negligence is hereby affirmed as being in violation of the Constitution and federal law under the applicable statutory guidelines.”
This advisory was released after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a case regarding a lawsuit that had been brought against Carnival Cruise Lines, the parent company of the cruise ships.
In this case, the plaintiffs had alleged that the cruise ships, namely Carnival Cruise Line, had a policy that dictated that all employees engaged in on-board work had to be adequately trained on any safety or labor issues that may arise during the course of their employment. Thus, it was alleged that Carnival was liable for injuries that resulted from this inadequate training.
In this same case, however, the three Federal Courts of Appeal that ultimately decided the case against Carnival Cruise Lines held that the language in the cruise ship agreement itself, which indicated that the cruise ship employers were not liable for the actions of their employees, was vague as applied to the cruise ship industry.
In seeking to distinguish this decision from those in the past, attorneys representing the complainants argue that the language in the agreement itself is simply too vague to apply to their situation. They further argue that if this definition of liability is too broad, then cruise ship companies may be subjected to litigations on a number of different grounds, including negligence, breach of contract, etc., which would subject their passengers to a litigant’s attempts to recoup damages from the cruise liners themselves. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously refused to hear arguments concerning the scope of this exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). There are currently no cases currently pending in the Federal Courts related to this issue.
The cruises industry is currently very regulated and requires periodic reporting and record-keeping to ensure compliance with certain labor and operating laws.
However, according to an independent review conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the U.S. Government, the numbers of Carnival cruise line lawsuits against its U.S. offshore cruise operators, in the Bahamas, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Playa del Carmen, Mexico, were significantly less than those filed against cruise lines out of the State of Florida. Furthermore, the review found that the enforcement of these laws by the Florida Department of Financial Services was unevenly applied, resulting in many unfair actions and excessive fines being doled out by the GAO. The GAO recommends that Congress provide additional funding to the departments of Transportation and Banking to enhance their efforts to enforce all laws associated with transportation. The review further recommends that all investigations into Carnival cruise line lawsuits should be completed by private investigators accredited by the American Society of Travel Agents.