Cruise Ship Sexual Assault Lawyer

• ✓A cruise line is strictly liable for a crew member’s assault of a passenger. In Doe v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 394 F.3d 891 (11th Cir. 2004), the Eleventh Circuit held that “under federal maritime law, a cruise line is strictly liable for crew member assaults on passengers during the cruise.” The court grounded that rule in the carrier’s “special implied duty of protection and safe transport that it owes as a common carrier through its employees to its passengers.” The court expressly distinguished the ordinary slip-and-fall “did they know” line of cases as “physical-condition cases” with no bearing on “a crew member assault on a passenger” (at 910). You do not have to prove the cruise line was warned. You have to prove what happened.
• ✓That rule was reinforced, not narrowed, by later cases. In Yusko v. NCL (Bahamas), Ltd., 4 F.4th 1164 (11th Cir. 2021), the Eleventh Circuit confirmed that the notice requirement governing many other cruise injury claims “does not—and was never meant to—apply to maritime negligence claims proceeding under a theory of vicarious liability.” A crew member’s own wrongful conduct is not something a cruise line can disclaim simply because no one reported a risk in advance.
• ✓Your deadline still comes from your ticket contract, not from Florida law. 46 U.S.C. § 30526 sets the outer floor: a cruise line may not give you less than six months to give written notice and less than one year to file suit. Carnival’s published ticket contract sets notice at 185 days; Royal Caribbean’s guest terms set it at six months. Both then require the lawsuit to be filed within one year and served on the cruise line within 120 days after filing. Florida’s general two-year negligence deadline, Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5), is not the clock that governs here.

• •42-inch rails. Federal law requires ship rails located not less than 42 inches above the cabin deck.
• •Peepholes on every door. Each passenger stateroom and crew cabin must have entry doors equipped with peepholes or another means of visual identification.
• •Video surveillance, with a retention floor. Ships must maintain video surveillance to help document crimes and provide evidence for prosecution — and keep it for at least 20 days, longer once an incident is reported.
• •Medical and forensic care onboard. Under 46 U.S.C. § 3507, a ship must keep in-date supplies of anti-retroviral medications and other medications designed to prevent sexually transmitted diseases after a sexual assault, keep equipment and materials for performing a medical examination in sexual assault cases, and make medical staff available to perform that examination promptly on request.
• •Free, immediate access to law enforcement contacts. A victim is entitled to free and immediate access to contact information for local law enforcement, the FBI, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
• •Confidentiality of findings. Examination findings are to remain confidential absent the patient’s authorization to release them.
• •Crime-scene preservation training. Under § 3508, ships must have crew trained and certified in crime-scene preservation, and a cruise line that fails to comply can face a civil penalty of up to $50,000.

1. The FBI is contacted first, by phone. Federal law requires the ship to contact the nearest FBI Field Office or Legal Attache “by telephone as soon as possible” for reported sex offenses under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2241–2244, among other serious incidents, under 46 U.S.C. § 3507.
2. A written report goes to the Department of Transportation. The cruise line must also furnish a written report of the incident to the website maintained by the Secretary of Transportation, which compiles the reports by cruise line.
3. The Coast Guard’s role is limited. The Coast Guard does not receive the crime report. Under the statute, it appears only as one of the agencies whose contact information you must be given — local law enforcement, the FBI, and the Coast Guard.
4. MARAD has no role in this process. The reporting duty under § 3507(g) runs to the Secretary of Transportation, not the Maritime Administration.
5. You are entitled to that contact information whether or not you decide to report. Federal law requires the ship to give you free, immediate access to those agencies’ contact information regardless of what you decide to do with it.

None of this requires you to decide anything on the spot. What it does mean is that a formal reporting process exists, federal agencies are meant to be involved, and the records that process generates can matter later — which is one more reason a preservation request for ship video should go out early.

• ✓We protect the contract deadline first. We identify your carrier’s ticket contract, calendar the notice and suit dates, and get written notice to the address the contract specifies — a period that under 46 U.S.C. § 30526(b) can be as short as six months.
• ✓We demand preservation of the video immediately. Ship video is only required to be kept 20 days absent a report. A formal preservation demand needs to go out as early as possible, before that window closes.
• ✓We build the strict-liability case under Doe v. Celebrity Cruises. Where the assault was committed by a crew member, we do not need to prove the cruise line had advance notice — we focus on establishing what happened.
• ✓We review whether the ship met its federal safety obligations. We examine whether the vessel met the physical security, medical, and reporting requirements of 46 U.S.C. §§ 3507–3508, and whether any failure contributed to what happened.
• ✓We prepare for the forum the contract chose. For Carnival and Royal Caribbean passengers, that is generally the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami.