The Carnival Corp. Grand Princess cruise ship sits anchored off the coast of San Francisco, California, U.S., on Sunday, March 8, 2020. The Grand Princess cruise ship, with more than 20 passengers and crew onboard confirmed to be infected with Covid-19, docked at the Port of Oakland, California, on Monday, March 9, 2020. (Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
After spending several days at sea on a vessel with confirmed COVID-19 cases, Florida couple Eva and Ronald Weissberger are suing Princess Cruise Lines for gross negligence in connection with a coronavirus outbreak aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship on which they are traveling.
Debi Chalik, a personal injury attorney at the Chalik & Chalik Law Offices in Plantation, Fla., filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of her clients, who also happen to be her parents.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks more than $1 million in damages. It blames Princess Cruise Lines for allowing passengers aboard the ship, despite allegedly knowing the vessel was contaminated with coronavirus.
Princess Cruise Lines did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
Meanwhile, Chalik said Eva, 69, and Ronald, 75, have been stranded on the cruise ship since Thursday, March 5, 2020, in bleak conditions. She said the couple was "exposed to the coronavirus running rampant" on the cruise ship, where they were "paying passengers."
Prior to arriving aboard the vessel, several hundred passengers were aboard the Diamond Princess. Before boarding the ship, proper screening protocols were not in place to minimize exposure to the disease to passengers and crew, the lawsuit alleges. Before boarding the Grand Princess, passengers only had to fill out a single piece of paper to confirm they were not sick with the new virus, and no passengers were questioned.
Passengers on the previous cruise ship were notified on Feb. 25, 2020, that at least two passengers had symptoms of COVID-19. Sixty-two passengers on the earlier voyage were exposed to the passengers that were confirmed infected, and two later died.
However, the new passengers on the Grand Princess were not informed prior to the sailing that other passengers had been on a cruise ship with infected passengers. Had they been notified, the plaintiffs allege, they could have avoided going aboard the Grand Princess or disembarked in Hawaii soon after the cruise ship set sail.
"The biggest problem is there is no communication from the ship with passengers," Chalik said. "They really learned the information from people like me, on land."
"They are in the dark," she added. "They are given snippets of information."
Chalik, in an interview with the ALM sister site Daily Business Review, said she is fielding calls from other people aboard the ship. Chalik said there is a real sense of panic on the vessel from passengers and crew members. She told us two other people aboard are in the process of filing a lawsuit.
Right now, servers are delivering three meals a day to passengers. Ronald, who has heart issues, was told by staff that he would have his medication before it runs out on Wednesday but has no assurance it will arrive on time.
Although the ship docked on Monday at the Port of Oakland, the offloading process is expected to take days, says The Washington Post, with passengers ultimately transported to various military bases for quarantining.
Chalik said, "I can't even imagine being in my parents' shoes right now."
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Michael A. Mora
Michael was born and raised in South Florida. He went to undergrad at Florida Atlantic University and earned his master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the crypto litigation reporter for Law.com, as well as an editor for ALM Global. You can email him at [email protected].
