Cruise line liable for rape by crewman on shore, Eleventh Circuit holds.

A cruise line is strictly liable for assaults on passengers by its crew members, even when the crime occurs on shore, the Eleventh Circuit has held. The decision by a three-judge panel allows a jury verdict awarding damages to the plaintiff passenger to stand. (Doe v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 394 F.3d 891 (11th Cir. 2004).)

In July 1999, plaintiff Jane Doe got off her cruise ship in Hamilton, Bermuda, a scheduled port-of-call, where she, her friends, and crew members from the Celebrity Cruises ship enjoyed an evening at a club. After the club closed, Doe became sick, and one of the crew members from her group offered to help her find a bathroom. Instead, Doe alleged, he took her to a nearby park and raped her.

Doe sued, and after the Florida court determined that the cruise line was strictly liable, a jury awarded damages. But the next year, the same court, under a different judge, threw out the verdict under Rule 50 (b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The judge held that because the plaintiff did not prove that the cruise line was both a common carrier and the employer of the crew member, she could not claim that it was strictly liable.

None of the parties had raised these issues when discussing pretrial stipulations. During the trial, the cruise line filed a motion for judgment arguing that the strict liability standard did not apply to common carriers. After the verdict, it filed a motion for judgment under Rule 50 (b), renewing its objection to strict liability and arguing that because the crew member's actions were outside the scope of his job, the cruise line was not liable for them.

In reversing the judgment for the cruise line, the Eleventh Circuit noted that the district court "lacked authority to enter judgment under Rule 50 (b) for the defendants on a ground not raised prior to the submission of the case to the jury." The appeals court also found that "a common carrier's strict liability to a passenger for crew member assaults during transit rests upon its special implied duty of protection and safe transport that it owes as a common carrier through its employees to its passengers, and not for the reason that the act is incident to a duty within the scope of the crew member's employment."

The cruise line's petition lot a rehearing en banc was denied at the end of February.

Michael Eriksen, a West Palm Beach, Florida, attorney who filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers and the Florida Admiralty Trial Lawyers Association, called the decision "a really significant extension of the law in favor of plaintiffs." This was especially so, he said, given that the Eleventh Circuit, unlike the First and Ninth circuits and the Supreme Court, had not spoken on this issue before.

"This industry has been waiting a long time to have a case like this come up in federal court and to get an appeal in the Eleventh Circuit," he said. "That would allow them to change federal maritime law, which would have the ultimate effect of trumping Florida state law," which calls for strict liability.

"Seventy-five to eighty percent of the cruise industry is based in Florida," Eriksen said, "and they have provisions in their tickets that require lawsuits against them to be filed in Florida, which is under the jurisdiction of the Eleventh Circuit. So to have the Eleventh Circuit make a decision like this is astronomical in importance."

The appeals court concluded that admiralty jurisdiction does not stop at the gangplank but "extends to the location of the sexual battery."

"Jane Doe was no less a cruise passenger the moment she stepped off the ship at a port-of-call than she was the moment before she stepped off the ship. We see no reason that cruise lines' liability to their passengers while at a regularly scheduled port-of-call and in a crew member's company should vary from port to port," the court said.

For Eriksen, "the net effect of this case is that shipowners have a responsibility as to what crew members do to passengers out in town and that the crew members themselves have a responsibility toward passengers and their safety that extends into town. Basically, the cruise line has a responsibility for the safety of passengers whether on or off the ship during the period of the cruise."