This Christmas break, unsuspecting college students and their parents may discover dangers on some cruise lines including serious injury and death. Newspapers, television and the Internet are reporting a number of injuries and deaths on cruise ships including disappearances and overboard falls.
Houston, TX (PRWEB) November 13, 2007 -- Thousands of college students will soon be leaving college campuses for their Christmas break. A number of students will be heading for warmer climates and cruise ships. Unsuspecting college students and their parents may discover dangers on some cruise lines including serious injury and death. Newspapers, television and the Internet are reporting a number of injuries and deaths on cruise ships. These reports include missing passengers who fell overboard. Other passengers have been injured or simply disappeared.
In the news recently, a cruise ship was alerted to a passenger overboard, but delayed action, resulting in the passenger's death. In another case a young man barely twenty-one years old, on vacation with his friends, had too much to drink and fell overboard while leaning over the railing because he was sick. The event was captured by a ship surveillance camera. His parents hired a law firm to sue the cruise ship line.
Maritime lawyer Bill Ogletree, of the Ogletree Abbott Law Firm in Houston, Texas, made the point that "Cruise ships are always promoted as the place to party and actively promote the sale of liquor to passengers and do not effectively monitor or police underage passengers who bring alcohol on board, especially in foreign ports."
Cruise ships are advertised as exciting and glitzy but nothing is said about the crimes that are committed on-board. Many cruise liners have larger populations than small cities and every form of crime and neglect can exist on even the best cruise lines. There have been recent reports of murder and rape along with assault, burglary and theft. When you think of a cruise, you think of the slick television ads instead of a reality that includes a mixture of different types of people from all over the world. Passengers and crew are thrown together in cramped quarters and often mix together on-board and on-shore. Cruise lines sometimes fail to properly investigate their employees' records before hiring them and expose passengers to crew members with criminal backgrounds, usually from a country other than the United States.
Jones Act attorneys point out that close quarters association with crew is a risk factor that must be taken into consideration in addition to the normal risk associated with binge drinking, drug experimentation and the party atmosphere prevalent during many college students' spring break and summer vacations. In addition to criminal behavior, there are on-board accidents such as falling overboard due to inadequately designed railings, slipping on wet decks, being hit by falling objects, food poisoning, being thrown about in rough seas due to the negligence of the captain and every conceivable type of injury common to people on land.
Injuries also occur when passengers leave the ship to visit ports of call. Cruise ships arrange and promote tours, trips, scuba, fishing and other activities and sometimes they do not check out or monitor the safety of these companies that provide the services the cruise ship sells to the passengers. In the news recently was a tour bus accident in Chile, which took the lives of passengers who were returning to a cruise ship when the bus swerved to avoid a truck, and plummeted 300 feet. During the same week, a fire broke out aboard a cruises ship in the Caribbean in which one person died and 11 were injured.
Jones Act lawyers say that it is important that college students do the research on various cruise ship lines before making a choice. Internet searches can produce many incidents that point out the risk and danger involved in cruise ship vacations. Awareness and precautions are important to the safety and well being of any student desiring to spend time on a cruise ship either during spring break or summer vacation. No one should take safety for granted just because they are passengers on an American cruise ship line. Most "American" cruise lines are not American at all. Most cruise lines are foreign companies with vessels flying flags of convenience. The Jones Act regulates U.S. shipping and Jones Act cases are handled by a Jones Act lawyer.
About the author: Bill Ogletree is a senior partner in the Ogletree Abbott Law Firm, L.L.P. with its principal offices in Houston, Texas. Mr. Ogletree is a Jones Act attorney and co-author of the new book entitled "Jones Act - Maritime Law for Injured Workers" now available at Amazon.com.) The Ogletree Abbott Law Firm is a nationwide Jones Act law firm that represents consumers and their families for claims against cruise lines.
Source: PRWeb: Legal / Law
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