A jury within the case of Jane Doe v. Carnival Company d/b/a Carnival Cruise Line case quantity 19-24766, pending in federal court docket for the Southern District of Florida, returned a verdict within the quantity of $10,200,000 on July 18, 2022 for a passenger who was raped by a crew member on the Carnival Miracle.
Details Alleged By Jane Doe
The salient details are contained partially in a call by a federal Justice of the Peace who dominated on numerous pre-trial motions filed by the events and reported in Doe v. Carnival Company 2021 WL 7540787. Within the pertinent components, the choice states:
“Jane Doe was a passenger onboard Carnival’s vessel, Miracle, and within the early hours of December 2, 2018, she alleges that Fredy Anggara, a Carnival crewmember, raped her in a storage closet.”
The criticism (lawsuit) which Jane Doe’s lawyer filed additional alleges extra particulars, which embody:
The incident occurred on “December 1, 2018;”
This was the “first cruise” for Jane Doe, a resident of the state of Washington;
“On the final evening of the topic cruise, Jane Doe went up a stairwell. On the high was a CARNIVAL worker (see picture produced in discovery);
As soon as Jane Doe reached the highest of the steps, the topic worker lured Jane Doe right into a (upkeep) closet. He went contained in the closet along with her, locked the door, raped her, and ejaculated on her;
Thereafter he unlocked the closet door and let Jane Doe go away;
Jane Doe instantly rushed away in direction of her room. The assailant caught as much as her and requested her to permit him again in her room. Jane Doe declined his request;
As soon as Jane Doe reached her room, she burst into tears and advised her good friend what had simply occurred;
Jane Doe and her good friend went to search out assist and report what had occurred;
Jane Doe began hyperventilating and having panic assaults;
Jane Doe situated staff of Defendant to report the crime;
The cruise’s employees members positioned Jane Doe in a wheelchair and took her to the ship’s medical facility the place employees utilized a rape equipment on her and gave her medicines to eat with a view to battle sexually transmitted ailments she might have obtained throughout the rape;
Jane Doe was subjected to quite a few episodes of humiliation following the medical examination the place she needed to stroll by dozens of passengers who had been ready to disembark the ship. They had been ogling her as she handed by them in only a t-shirt as she was not offered any contemporary garments to put on; and
Following the cruise, Jane Doe adopted up with CARNIVAL to see if the topic worker had been fired, if any disciplinary motion was taken, and/or if he was arrested. CARNIVAL didn’t reply.”
Carnival’s Protection
Throughout discovery, Carnival responded to the rape by claiming by its company consultant Suzie Vasquez (a lawyer) that on Carnival cruise ships allegedly “sexual assaults are literally very, very uncommon . . .”
Cruise Knowledgeable – Dr. Ross Klein
Previous to trial, Carnival tried to ban notable cruise professional Dr. Ross Klein, who’s the writer of the favored CruiseJunkie site, to testify relating to the frequency of rapes aboard Carnival cruise ships. Dr. Klein has beforehand testified as an professional earlier than each homes of Congress relating to the problems of crime on cruise ships. His opinions are connected. Jane Doe’s counsel sought to elicit testimony from Dr. Klein that Carnival had discover that Mr. Anggara, the Carnival assailant, was prone to assault passengers. Carnival tried to dam Dr. Klein’s testimony that:
- The cruise business as an entire, and Carnival Cruise Line specifically, has an consciousness of the issue of rapes, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents on cruise ships, together with the incidence of rape, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents on Carnival cruise ships.
- Carnival Cruise Line failed in utilizing accessible information to conduct a social epidemiological evaluation of crimes on its ships with the objective of focused and particular methods for stopping rape, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents.
- Visitors are given an elevated sense of security by promotional materials for Carnival Cruise Traces cruises, and by publication of crime statistics for rape and sexual assault on its web site.
- The sexual assault of Jane Doe was to a level foreseeable given the cruise line’s information about previous sex-related incidents, about use of alcohol onboard Carnival ships, and its failure to implement affordable initiatives to handle the issue of rape, sexual assault, and sex-related incidents onboard Carnival ships.
In an order denying Carnival’s movement in its entirety, the federal Justice of the Peace dominated that Dr. Klein is certified, his methodology is dependable, and his testimony is useful to the jury.
Counsel for Jane Doe filed a movement in search of sanctions in opposition to Carnival for what he alleged was the intentional misconduct of the protection counsel for Carnival and the cruise line’s company consultant throughout the trial (see exhibit 303).
Rape Circumstances Towards Carnival Cruise Line
Within the yr earlier than COVID-19 crippled the cruise business, there have been over 100 sexual assaults on cruise ships, in response to DOT cruise crime statistics which breaks down as follows:
- Carnival Cruise Line: 43 sexual assault victims (37 passengers).
- Royal Caribbean: 31 sexual victims (20 passengers).
I attended a listening to in 2007 earlier than Congress relating to cruise ship crime the place a senior FBI official testified that solely 7% of sexual assaults on cruise ships are prosecuted in federal court docket.
This poor prosecution fee is due to the historic reluctance of the FBI to change into concerned in intercourse crimes at sea, the tendency of the cruse business to brush the crimes below the rug, and the inadvertent or intentional destruction of proof on cruise ships.
Carnival Cruise Line Leads Cruise Trade with the Most Sexual Assaults
The U.S. Congress has studied the issues of rape aboard cruise ships. The cruise business’s commerce group, CLIA, argued that per capita cruise ship crime charges needs to be based mostly on the overall variety of individuals cruising in any yr (round 30,000,000 cruised this yr) slightly than the typical variety of individuals populating cruise ships on any given day. By analogy, the per capita crime statistics for U.S. cities are calculated based mostly on the variety of residents in a metropolis. Vacationers who go to the town throughout the yr are clearly not counted as residents. Think about how the crime statistics for New York Metropolis could be diluted if as an alternative of calculating crime charges based mostly on the variety of residents within the metropolis (roughly 8 million), this quantity was inflated to incorporate every of the greater than 60 million individuals who go to the town yearly.
Congress rejected CLIA’s argument and concluded that per capita cruise crime statistics needs to be calculated based mostly on the typical variety of passengers crusing at a selected time, not on the annual variety of passengers.
Utilizing Congress’ methodology to find out sexual assault fee ends in a per capita fee for Carnival 
Cruise Line of almost 40 (39.6) per 100,000. This quantity is calculated by taking the variety of sexual assaults on Carnival ships reported to the FBI within the final 12 months of 2019 (43), and dividing it by the overall variety of individuals on Carnival’s fleet of ships (round 75,000 passengers and roughly 33,500 crew members for a complete of 108,500).
The per capita fee of sexual assaults on Carnival ships of 40 per 100,000 is important. (Please word, that is my opinion based mostly on the info which I’ve reviewed; it’s not essentially the opinion of Dr. Klein). It’s a increased per capita fee than California, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia (and over a dozen different states). The speed on Carnival ships is increased than the typical per capita rape fee in the USA of round 27 of 100,000.
Jane Doe’s Counsel – Daniel Courtney
Jane Doe is represented by Miami lawyer Daniel Cortney. This can be a vital verdict which demonstrates the seriousness of the case and the sufferer’s accidents. Congratulations to Mr. Courtney and his employees for his or her wonderful work on this case.
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Picture credit score: Carnival Miracle – Master0Garfield – CC BY-SA 4.0 commons / wikimedia (high); CRUISEMAPPER (backside).
