Federal Court ruling re Ruby Princess

[Relaxing Robbies]

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/2023/10/25/ruby-princess-negligent-covid-cruise?ahe=3ca0b4482c1f86ed9a9d84ac9b192c2f24a774ff615badb93653e68d8bbd1669&utm_medium=email&lr_hash=&acid=2560360&utm_source=Adestra&utm_campaign=PM Extra - 20231025

 

In a ruling that surprises me, the Federal Court has found Princess negligent re the Ruby Princess Cruise.  

Justice Angus Stewart found the cruise company knew or ought to have known about the heightened risk of COVID-19 infection on the vessel.

He said the company owed Karpik a duty to take reasonable care for her health and safety, including the risk of harm from the virus.

“To proceed with the cruise carried a significant risk of a coronavirus outbreak, with possible disastrous consequences, yet they proceeded regardless,” he said on Wednesday. 

“The respondents were therefore negligent and in breach of their duty of care.” Stewart also found Carnival had misled passengers with claims it was “reasonably safe” to embark on the cruise despite the heightened risk of contracting COVID on board.

 

 

 

 

 

[Relaxing Robbies]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-25/nsw-ruby-princess-passengers-win-class-action-carnival/103018412

 

The ABC’s reporting of the case above gives more details. Small payout to the lead plaintiff, who had mild covid herself.

[PerfectlyPerth]

The full judgment is here. 
https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1280

[arxcards]

The risks that would have been apparent to CA were also apparent to many who boarded. There were scores of passengers that wanted to cancel due to the potential covid risk, but they would have done their dollars, so most boarded anyway.

 

That is what courts are for. Negligence is making mistakes, which is a human attribute. People made mistakes. It doesn't signal any wilful conduct.

[MicCanberra]

The court also ruled the people were negligent for boarding. Thus only paying for medical bills.

[Relaxing Robbies]

4 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

The court also ruled the people were negligent for boarding. Thus only paying for medical bills.

I just read the whole judgement linked above by Perfectly Perth. My take on that was the judge did not find contributory negligence by people boarding because they knew less about the risks than Princess did, and Princess was sending communications reassuring people that Princess was doing everything possible to keep them safe and healthy.

 

The reason she was only awarded the medical costs was that her assessed degree of injury was only 8% of maximum, or 12% if she did indeed have long covid. That was under the threshold required to be awarded any other damages.  I wonder how that will play out with the other litigants involved in the class action by Shine lawyers.  Will be interesting to see what Princess does.

[OzKiwiJJ]

But that's the thing! Princess does do everything it possibly can to keep passengers safe and healthy. It's other passengers who are the problem. The ones who decide "it's only a cold" and "I'm not going to let it spoil my cruise" and who wander around the ship coughing and sneezing over everyone.🤬

[possum52]

17 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

But that's the thing! Princess does do everything it possibly can to keep passengers safe and healthy. It's other passengers who are the problem. The ones who decide "it's only a cold" and "I'm not going to let it spoil my cruise" and who wander around the ship coughing and sneezing over everyone.🤬

I agree Julie, people were still boarding with cold/flu symptoms and even onboard people were still mixing with others even when showing signs of illness. They were not taking responsibility for themselves or showing concern for others. Unfortunately some people are selfish and couldn't care about anyone else other than themselves. 

[Gwendy]

I am amazed by people’s lack of personal accountability.  They knew Covid was rife and going on a cruise shop was iffy after Diamond Princess.

This was the same time we cancelled our long planned family cruise to Alaska.

[Cruisecrusader22]

My husband and I were booked for that cruise. We live in North Queensland and were undecided on whether to go on the cruise in the few weeks leading up to it. As we were booked in an interior stateroom we felt the risk of being quarantined in the room was too great. Yes, Australia didn’t really have much covid at that time, but everyone who thinks about things knew that there were passengers flying in from overseas for the cruise and there was no way that covid wasn’t going to spread on board. Finally two days before departure we asked ourselves if it wasn’t for losing our money paid for the trip would we be going? No, we wouldn’t and so I phoned and cancelled. We assumed that we forfeited our payments (for airfare and cruise) however a few days later Princess offered the future cruise credit and so we got that. Everyone had the opportunity/responsibility to assess and decide if it was worth their risk of going. Although at the time we did feel hat Princess should have just cancelled the cruise. We used our credit on the Majestic Princess last year (boarding straight after the 600 cases of covid got off in Sydney!). We had a very nice cruise and didn’t get sick. Now we are booked for NZ on Royal Princess in a few weeks and on the new Sun Princess in April.

[Sallyandtex]

31 minutes ago, Gwendy said:

I am amazed by people’s lack of personal accountability.  They knew Covid was rife and going on a cruise shop was iffy after Diamond Princess.

This was the same time we cancelled our long planned family cruise to Alaska.

Yes us too , to Norway prior to the Do Not Travel but  we didn't want to take the risk!

HAL gave a refund but TA took $2000 in commissions I made an insurance claim lucky it was covered but out of pocket around $700 total trip.

After Do Not Travel, HAL gave refunds plus extra perks for rebooking.

[MicCanberra]

Some lines handled cancellations due to covid better than others and also at differing times the same line handled differing circumstances with different approaches. It was all new at the time and the approach was constantly changing just like the covid policies.

[OzKiwiJJ]

The previous Princess cruise had finished with, I believe, apparently no signs of Covid so it was quite understandable that Princess did not choose to cancel the ill-fated cruise. Plus an influenza outbreak was starting up as well. It would not have been easy for Princess to deal with both viruses, especially when passengers were ignoring symptoms and circulating freely through the ship,

[robncruise]

I was on the the infamous cruise and apart from one woman in a large group in the MDR on the last night I and my travelling companion did not see any evidence of illness on board .  Illness was rife on my previous cruise (Xmas/ New Year  2019/20 on the Golden Princess from Melbourne . All 3 in my party got sick and months later once we knew about covid the thought crossed our minds did we have covid back then !  But whatever that that bug was it was rampant in Melbourne too - even some of  the NZ cricket team came down with it in Jan 2020.

[MicCanberra]

1 hour ago, robncruise said:

I was on the the infamous cruise and apart from one woman in a large group in the MDR on the last night I and my travelling companion did not see any evidence of illness on board .  Illness was rife on my previous cruise (Xmas/ New Year  2019/20 on the Golden Princess from Melbourne . All 3 in my party got sick and months later once we knew about covid the thought crossed our minds did we have covid back then !  But whatever that that bug was it was rampant in Melbourne too - even some of  the NZ cricket team came down with it in Jan 2020.

I definitely agree that Covid was around well before we knew it as Covid.

[Vader1111]

On 10/26/2023 at 11:43 AM, OzKiwiJJ said:

But that's the thing! Princess does do everything it possibly can to keep passengers safe and healthy. It's other passengers who are the problem. The ones who decide "it's only a cold" and "I'm not going to let it spoil my cruise" and who wander around the ship coughing and sneezing over everyone.🤬

Princess' problem was that they weren't doing everything they possibly could, to keep the passengers safe.  For example, they weren't doing temperature checks at embarkation - at a time when high temperature was known to be a COVID symptom.

 

That's not to detract from the actions of the passengers themselves, and you are quite correct in your statements about them... but to say that Princess was doing everything possible is just flat wrong.

[MicCanberra]

Of course Princess didn't do all they could.

They could have not let anyone on, or they could have isolated everyone to their cabin for the cruise or they could have made everyone wear full ppe for the entire cruise.

They were providing a cruise in an ever changing environment and as such could not do everything without severely affecting the cruise experience. 

Hindsight is wonderful but then no one could predict the need for 2020 vision back then.

[OzKiwiJJ]

4 hours ago, Vader1111 said:

Princess' problem was that they weren't doing everything they possibly could, to keep the passengers safe.  For example, they weren't doing temperature checks at embarkation - at a time when high temperature was known to be a COVID symptom.

 

That's not to detract from the actions of the passengers themselves, and you are quite correct in your statements about them... but to say that Princess was doing everything possible is just flat wrong.

Was any organization doing temperature checks that early on in the pandemic? Certainly they became common eventually but I don't think it was when that cruise departed.

[robncruise]

3 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

Of course Princess didn't do all they could.

They could have not let anyone on, or they could have isolated everyone to their cabin for the cruise or they could have made everyone wear full ppe for the entire cruise.

They were providing a cruise in an ever changing environment and as such could not do everything without severely affecting the cruise experience. 

Hindsight is wonderful but then no one could predict the need for 2020 vision back then.

Yes Princess could have done all the above as every passenger could have cone of theitr own volition if they were so concerned. What Princess did do was provide so much written info delivered to each cabin and repeated shipwide announcements regarding hand sanitising  and refraining from physical contact and reporting to medical if experiencing any flu like or respiratory symptoms,  I do not know what else they could have done to make sure that passengers took some responsibilty for their own and others welfare. As mentioned there was no visible illness on board but was visible was the blatant disregard of the sensible guidelines Princess recommended -  elderly men who sidestepped the hand sanitisersand  younger ones hugging new friends at disembarkation, Was so sad to see 

[arxcards]

1 hour ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

Was any organization doing temperature checks that early on in the pandemic? Certainly they became common eventually but I don't think it was when that cruise departed.

Yes, when trying to get a grasp on what was unfolding on your upcoming Diamond Princess, they were temperature testing to screen/triage who needed to be swabbed.

[arxcards]

3 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

Of course Princess didn't do all they could.

They could have not let anyone on, or they could have isolated everyone to their cabin for the cruise or they could have made everyone wear full ppe for the entire cruise.

They were providing a cruise in an ever changing environment and as such could not do everything without severely affecting the cruise experience. 

Hindsight is wonderful but then no one could predict the need for 2020 vision back then.

I agree Mic.

Princess was supposed to be lacking in their risk assessments and somehow had to connect what was happening on Diamond & Grand, even though the passengers and ports were totally different.

 

When Ruby returned to Sydney several days later NSW Health, armed with all their up to the minute knowledge, treated the situation as low risk too. They decided even those with "flu like" symptoms were unlikely to have covid and thus didn't require swabs to be processed before disembarking the ship.

[OzKiwiJJ]

13 minutes ago, arxcards said:

Yes, when trying to get a grasp on what was unfolding on your upcoming Diamond Princess, they were temperature testing to screen/triage who needed to be swabbed.

But that was after they knew there was an outbreak onboard. 

 

Very few, if any, places were doing checks of all people visiting those places, embarking on cruises, arriving at airports, etc, etc at that time. 

[arxcards]

1 minute ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

But that was after they knew there was an outbreak onboard. 

 

Very few, if any, places were doing checks of all people visiting those places, embarking on cruises, arriving at airports, etc, etc at that time. 

Correct, but in making a decision whether to embark the cruise, they could have screened if they wanted to. IMO, they are not negligent for deciding not to screen, but it was an option. Had they chosen to temperature screen, nurses in PPE would have scared the beejeezus out of the passengers and it would have been a logistical nightmare. Head office wanted the ship to embark, and only government intervention would have stopped it.

 

Temperature testing only became a screening tool when government authorities decided when/where it needed to be undertaken.

[MicCanberra]

Lots of mistakes were made by all concerned, it is such a shame that people are always looking for a scapegoat to blame and pay the recompense 

[Relaxing Robbies]

2 hours ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

Was any organization doing temperature checks that early on in the pandemic? Certainly they became common eventually but I don't think it was when that cruise departed.

Not sure about 8th March, but we were definitely temperature checked before embarking CarnivalSpirit on 14th March in Melbourne.  My son initially registered high by the scanner and had to undergo further temperature checking before being allowed to board.