The federal court has found Carnival Cruise lines was negligent and engaged in misleading representations over the Ruby Princess voyage in 2020 during the COVID outbreak.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Yeah, look, this is a really interesting case where Justice Angus Stewart said that Carnival
00:06 Cruises, which is the parent company of the Ruby Princess, had breached Australian consumer
00:12 law.
00:13 But most importantly was that finding that the company had been found to be negligent
00:18 and engaged in misleading representations over this voyage.
00:22 The reason that is important is because there were several hundred passengers on board this
00:26 ship who had basically signed their contracts under US regulations.
00:34 Now under that regulation there was this waiver which said that they could not bring class
00:39 actions.
00:40 So in order for them to actually be successful to claim damages, they needed to argue that
00:45 the Australian law had been breached in a way that would override essentially that waiver.
00:51 That has actually been found to be successful today.
00:54 And so while this is just one particular case, it is expected that this could open the way
01:01 for hundreds more cases for these passengers.
01:04 There's about 600 of them who had signed up to this cruise under this US condition.
01:11 And what's been the reaction to the decision?
01:15 There's been quite a bit of reaction so far.
01:16 So first off, lawyers have definitely welcomed this decision.
01:19 They said that it is a globally significant decision today.
01:26 And Susan Carpick, who is the lead plaintiff, has also welcomed the decision, though she
01:32 said that it does not bring back the lives of the 28 people who died after contracting
01:36 COVID while on board this ship.
01:39 I was very pleased with that finding and I hope the other passengers are pleased with
01:46 that finding too.
01:48 I hope the finding brings some comfort to them because they've all been through the
01:54 mill and back from our time on the cruise and the time after the cruise.
01:59 It's been a long journey for a good percentage of those cruise passengers and we're very
02:06 grateful for the legal team taking this up for us and for the outcomes of today.
02:14 So that is Susan Carpick, the lead plaintiff in that.
02:17 And I guess that this is going to be the first of what could be many cases to come.
02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]