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New York City is home to world-class cruise ship terminals located in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. New York City is one of the most exciting places to take a cruise from as they have itineraries that include Canada, Bermuda, New England, Europe, the Caribbean, and around the world.
The terminal handles over 1 million passengers a year. The Manhattan Cruise Terminal is conveniently located in Midtown at the intersection of 55th St. and 12th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. The Manhattan cruise terminal used to be known as the New York Passenger Ships Terminal or Port Authority Passenger ship terminal. There is also another nearby cruise terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey known as the Cape Liberty Cruise Port.
Norwegian Cruise Lines ship the “Norwegian Breakaway” sails out of the New York passenger ship terminal year-round and Norwegian spent over $4 million renovating and upgrading the cruise terminal to accommodate this magnificent ship. In addition to Norwegian, Carnival, Oceania, Crystal Cruises, Disney, Silversea, Holland America, and AIDA also cruise out of the Manhattan cruise terminal.
New York City itself is one of the most exciting tourist destinations in the world and Cruise ship passengers shouldn’t miss an opportunity to explore New York City and its Burroughs if they are embarking on a cruise from New York City. Some of the best attractions in New York include the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Plaza, and the beautiful and exciting neighborhoods of Greenwich Village, Soho, Tribeca, Wall Street, and more.
If it’s your first time cruising from New York, our New York cruise accident lawyers strongly recommend that you purchase a tour of New York City directly from the cruise line. All of the cruises that leave from New York City have prepackaged tours of the city available on their websites, these tours will take you and your family to all the major sites in just a few hours.
Most importantly, they will get you back to the cruise ship terminal in time to make it to your cruise. In the event that they are late for whatever reason such as a mechanical problem or accident of some sort, the cruise will wait for you and not leave under most circumstances. If I were you to purchase a tour of New York City independently of the cruise line and got stuck somewhere, the cruise will leave on time without you, and it will be your responsibility to meet the cruise at its next port or you will forfeit the entire purchase of your cruise.
This recommendation for purchasing excursions directly from cruise lines extends to sightseeing trips that you may choose to take throughout your cruise in foreign countries as well. All of the cruise lines will offer you exciting opportunities for you and your family to see and experience the best of what each port has to offer. For instance, zip lining, rock climbing, jet skiing, snorkeling, or other types of activities are all available in most ports but can be dangerous and result in injuries.
Cruise lines that sell shore excursions will require the shore excursion operator to purchase liability insurance that will protect an injured passenger who gets hurt on a sightseeing excursion on shore. If you purchase the excursion or sightseeing package independently from a vendor in the port, they may not have insurance or licenses.
If you get injured while participating in a sightseeing activity such as zip lining or speed boat rides in a foreign country it can be difficult if not impossible to hold the shore excursion operator accountable for your claim. Injuries from sightseeing tours include broken bones, neck and back injuries, hip and pelvis injuries, knee and ankle injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and even death.
Our New York City cruise lawyers have decades of experience holding cruise lines and shoreside tour operators responsible when their carelessness causes an accident and injury to passengers. We offer free legal consultations to anyone who’s been injured on a shore excursion, tour, or other activity while on a cruise. These consultations are confidential and can be done over the telephone, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, or FaceTime. Since most claims must be initiated within one year of the date of the incident and each country has its own legal process and limitations, we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible so that we can begin the process of investigating your accident and protecting your legal rights.
Not all accidents on cruises, shore excursions, gangways, or in port terminals are viable legal cases. In other words simply because you got hurt doesn’t mean that anyone or any corporation is responsible to compensate you. However, our lawyers who focus on cruise accidents understand how to analyze, investigate, evaluate, and prosecute them in Federal Court.
The sooner you contact our office the better we can serve you as a potential client. As time passes, memories fade, witnesses disappear, and evidence seems to evaporate. This is particularly true of the CCTV footage that may exist on board a cruise ship that could be incredibly valuable in proving your case. Most cruise lines claim to “tape over“ CCTV footage unless it is specifically requested. And even in those situations they rarely preserve an adequate amount of CCTV footage to help prosecute a claim.
Even though your cruise left from New York City, most of these major cruise lines like Carnival, Norwegian, Celebrity, Disney, and others require that lawsuits against them be filed in Federal District Court in Florida. That’s because Florida is where the major cruise lines maintain their corporate headquarters and an army of lawyers that are on call to defend them from claims made by injured people.
Additionally, the Federal Courthouse in Miami is home to some of the most experienced federal judges in the areas of maritime law. Maritime law is a complex combination of personal injury, federal law, and international law, and most judges outside of Miami are unfamiliar with the nuances of cruise ship injury law.
One of the most difficult types of cases we see as New York cruise ship accident lawyers is those that involve injured children. Children can easily get hurt on a cruise ship while participating in onboard activities like waterslides, rock climbing, artificial surf simulators like Royal Caribbean‘s Flowrider, and while under the care and custody of the ship’s kids clubs.
Another problem that we frequently see in children’s accidents on cruise ships is drowning or near drowning cases because for some reason the majority of major cruise lines still refuse to have trained professional lifeguards at the swimming pools. Instead, they rely on parents who are easily distracted by the spectacular views of the open sea, reading a book, or just taking a nap to serve as the lifeguards for their children.
It only takes a moment of distraction for a child to drown. These types of accidents we believe are very preventable but for years, children who have drowned and the cruise lines have done nothing to change the way they operate their pools, waterslides, and other water attractions like jacuzzis.
Cruise ships are in essence floating cities with people from all walks of life on board the ship. There are also a lot of intoxicated people because they are on vacation and many have purchased the “all you can drink packages” which we believe encourage passengers to drink more than they normally would otherwise.
The combination of alcohol and unsupervised children can be extremely risky and can result in sexual assault and rape cases. If the child is a US citizen or the cruise ship leaves from the United States or visits a US port the FBI has exclusive jurisdiction to investigate these claims of sexual assault and rape.
Sexual assault can occur between passengers, passengers and crew, and passengers and third-party vendors on the ship, in the terminal, in port, on a shore tour, or an excursion. We have investigated and represented individuals of all ages who have been assaulted and or raped on cruise ships. These types of crimes can occur between members of the same sex as well.
Recently, a Florida Federal jury returned a verdict against Carnival Cruise Line for over $10 million for a case where a female passenger alleged that she was raped by a male crewmember.
Perhaps the most common type of case that we see on cruises that leave from New York are slip and falls on wet and slippery decks, floors, steps, and other surfaces throughout the cruise ship. These occur with frequency because cruise ships are exposed to sea salt spray, wet feet from people exiting swimming pools, jacuzzis, waterslides, spilled drinks, and dropped food.
However, simply because you slipped and fell doesn’t mean under Federal Maritime law that the cruise line is automatically responsible to compensate you for your pain and suffering, medical expenses, or other damages. Rather, it is required that the injured person and the lawyers prove that the cruise line was on “notice“ of the dangerous condition before the accident happened. This can be an extraordinarily difficult thing to prove.
One of the first things our experienced Maritime accident lawyers do in investigating a slip and fall and a cruise ship is to determine how many other passengers have fallen under substantially similar circumstances in the same area before this happened. This is not easy to do because the cruise lines will fight us to the nail making it difficult to obtain this information because they know that the more accidents that happened there before the more likely that they were on some form of “constructive notice.“
In order to obtain this information, our lawyers will have to sue the cruise line in Federal Court in Miami and send out what is called discovery which is a written request for the cruise line to produce information regarding prior incidents. Most cruise lines notoriously object to this information and will fight us and refuse to produce it. This often results in having to go to the judge and have a hearing to compel the cruise line that produced the simple information.
In addition to the written discovery, our firm frequently performs what is known as a “ship inspection.“ This is where we go onboard the ship and take measurements with experienced experts in the field of maritime architecture and engineering of the surface and scene of where the accident occurred. We perform tests on staircases such as the height of the railing, the length of the steps, the height of the threshold, and other conditions that may be involved in causing or contributing to our client’s accident and injuries.
The sooner that we are hired the sooner we can get on the ship and perform these inspections. That is why we encourage you not to wait as evidence can disappear and ships are frequently remodeled by the cruise lines and we may lose the opportunity we have to test the area where the accident happened. If you’re unable to prove your case, in other words, that the cruise line had advanced notice of the dangerous condition cases are frequently dismissed.
If you have suffered a slip, trip, or fall on a cruise ship please contact our personal injury law office as soon as possible so that we can help you understand your legal rights.
Modern cruises have medical centers on board their ships that are staffed by medical doctors and nurses who are foreign-trained. Rarely, if ever is the ship’s doctor licensed to practice medicine in the United States. However, medical malpractice that can cause serious life-threatening injuries and even death to passengers happens at sea.
If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of careless medical attention on board a cruise ship it’s important to consult as soon as possible with an experienced cruise ship medical malpractice attorney. Our office has successfully represented individuals who are victims of medical mistakes at sea.
The typical type of medical mistakes that our firm has seen is failure to diagnose fractured arms and legs, failure to treat life-threatening conditions such as strokes and sudden cardiac arrest, and the failure to properly and efficiently medically disembark a critically ill passenger to a Shoreside facility that can help them.
Cruise ship hospitals are not equipped to diagnose the most serious injuries because they do not have MRIs or CT scans. Rather they have x-ray machines, and the ability to do blood in urine analyses. If a passenger presents with a life-threatening injury these cruise lines all have the ability for the ship’s medical doctor to consult with a shoreside specialist in any field of medicine 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, they rarely do this and the ship’s doctors take the responsibility to treat and diagnose the passengers themselves. Often making critical mistakes that cost a passenger their life.
If you or someone you love has been the victim of medical malpractice on a cruise ship please contact our cruise medical mistakes lawyers today, for a free initial and confidential consultation regarding your legal rights. We’re available by telephone, Skype, FaceTime, Google Meet, or Zoom to help you unravel your potential claim.
We offer anyone who may have been injured while on a cruise an initial legal consultation free of charge by SKYPE, email, or telephone, toll-free at 1-866-597-4529. Our lawyers have a combined legal experience of nearly 50 years, holding cruise lines accountable for putting their profits ahead of your safety. Let our lawyers help you obtain the compensation you may be entitled to for lost wages, medical expenses, travel reimbursement, loss of the enjoyment of the cruise, and pain and suffering. Call us today. We are ready to help.
That’s because most cruise lines require that claims against them be filed in Federal Court in Miami. They do this to make it difficult and expensive for cruise ship passengers who are injured to prosecute claims.
Most major cruise lines require that claims against it be filed within one year of the date of the incident in Federal Court in the United States. However, some cruise lines like Norwegian have written notice requirements before a lawsuit can’t even be filed. Consult immediately with a Maritime lawyer to protect your legal rights.
Most cruise lines would rather resolve cases than pay to fight them. However, the question is for how much? Cruise lines are looking to nickel and dime injured passengers rather than compensate them for the full value of the claim. So yes, the claim can be settled and most frequently they are but it requires an experienced maritime attorney to maximize your compensation. Injured passengers are entitled to get money for pain and suffering, medical expenses, lost wages, and the loss of the cruise.
Most claims can be settled within a few months to a year of hiring our maritime accident law firm.
Miami-based Aronfeld Trial Lawyers was established by Board Certified Trial Lawyer, Spencer Aronfeld in 1991. The firm represents cases resulting in serious injuries in the areas of Defective Product Liability, Maritime Law, Automobile Accidents, Premises Liability, Cycling Accidents, Slip and Fall Incidents, Wrongful Death, Medical and Dental Malpractice, Civil Rights Claims, Workplace Injuries, Sexual Assault, and others. Every client receives the full benefit of our experience, our resources, and our commitment. The practice of personal injury law is our calling. We are a firm of high-profile, nationally recognized legal advocates who work for you, our client, never big business. All attorneys and staff members at the firm are bilingual speaking Spanish. To learn more, visit https://www.aronfeld.com/ or contact Aronfeld Trial Lawyers directly at (305) 441-0440.
Aronfeld Trial Lawyers is a firm of high-profile, nationally recognized legal advocates who work for you, our client, never big business. We represent cases resulting in serious injuries in the areas of Cruise Ship Injuries, Wrongful Death, Automobile Accidents, Cycling Accidents, Slip and Fall Incidents, Product Liability, Civil Rights Claims, Workplace Injuries, Maritime Law, Sexual Assault, Medical and Dental Malpractice, and others.
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