A Sydney judge has found Carnival Australia was negligent and breached its duty of care for passengers on board the Ruby Princess in 2020. A class action lawsuit was launched after some 2,600 passengers embarked on the ill-fated trip in the early stages of the COVID pandemic.
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00:00 660 people caught COVID-19 as a result of this voyage of the Ruby Princess cruise ship
00:07 that left from Sydney in March 2020.
00:10 In a class action lawsuit, Carnival and Princess cruise lines were accused of breaches of Australian
00:15 consumer law and also breaching their duty of care to the passengers on board.
00:20 Federal Court Judge Justice Angus Stewart has today found Carnival was negligent in
00:25 respect of precautions they should have taken for passenger safety.
00:30 In a summary of his decision, he's also said Carnival engaged in misleading representations
00:35 by sending out pre-holiday communication to passengers that suggested it was reasonably
00:40 safe to get on board the vessel.
00:42 I have found that before the embarkation of passengers on the Ruby Princess for the cruise
00:47 in question, the respondents knew or ought to have known about the heightened risk of
00:52 coronavirus infection on the vessel and its potentially lethal consequences and that their
00:58 procedures for screening passengers and crew members for the virus were unlikely to screen
01:03 out all infectious individuals.
01:05 Part of the reason why the judge found that knowledge should have been there was the experience
01:09 that the company had with outbreaks of COVID-19 on board two other ships internationally that
01:14 it also operated that happened the month before.
01:18 The lead plaintiff in this case was Susan Carpick who is a retired nurse.
01:22 Now her case of COVID-19 was relatively mild but her husband became very ill.
01:28 He ended up spending almost two months in hospital.
01:31 He was placed in an induced coma and at one point he was given just days to live.
01:36 I was very pleased with that finding and I hope the other passengers are pleased with
01:43 that finding too.
01:44 I hope the finding brings some comfort to them because they've all been through the
01:50 mill and back from our time on the cruise and the time after the cruise.
01:56 Now in Mrs Carpick's specific circumstances she was seeking damages for personal injury,
02:01 distress and disappointment.
02:03 Today she was only successful in being awarded $4,400 for out of pocket medical expenses.
02:09 The judge found that any damages for distress and disappointment would have been offset
02:13 by a refund for the trip that all passengers received.
02:17 Her lawyers though have called this a comprehensive legal victory.
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