The lawsuit, brought on behalf of a Missouri couple who were passengers on the Grand Princess, alleges gross negligence over the cruise line’s “lackadaisical approach” to ensuring the safety of its passengers of the ship, quarantined off the coast of California. The suit is the first to be filed by a firm other than Chalik & Chalik Injury Lawyers, which filed four similar cases last week.
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Mikal Watts has filed a lawsuit against Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. for its “lackadaisical approach” to ensuring the safety of its passengers of the ship quarantined over COVID-19 off the coast of California.
The suit is the first filed against Princess Cruise Lines by a plaintiffs firm other than Chalik & Chalik Injury Lawyers in Plantation, Florida, which brought four cases last week on behalf of other passengers on the ship, the Grand Princess, where 21 people tested positive for the coronavirus. As in those cases, the complaint filed by Watts, of Watts Guerra in San Antonio, alleges Princess Cruise Lines made an “extreme departure of what a reasonably careful cruise line would do,” particularly given the quarantine of a previous voyage quarantined off the coast of Japan that led to 700 cases of coronavirus.
“The whole world is taking reasonable precautions to protect individuals from the coronavirus; Princess Cruise Lines failed to do so,” Watts said in an email. “Even worse, it ignored vital information that its ships were contaminated, and thereafter subjected its customers to horrific exposure to a deadly virus.” The complaint, filed Friday in the Central District of California federal court, seeks punitive damages and “past and future medical, incidental, and service expenses” on behalf of Debra and Michael Dalton, a couple from Missouri.
Watts is a prominent attorney in the personal injury bar whose recent cases including suits over Juul electronic cigarettes and Syngenta’s genetically modified corn seed. Watts brought the complaint alongside another attorney at his firm, Alicia O’Neill, and two other law firms, San Diego’s Singleton Law Firm and Andres Pereira Law Firm in Austin, Texas.
Source: https://www.law.com/2020/03/16/mikal-watts-sues-princess-cruise-lines-over-covid-19-outbreak/
