USA TODAY / AP: Pasquale Vaglio, 82, fell and hit his head shortly after disembarking for a sightseeing trip in Bermuda. He was immediately taken to the ship’s medical unit, where a nurse did a cursory examination and said Vaglio should rest in his cabin. What she didn’t know — and a doctor wouldn’t discover until hours later — was that Vaglio had suffered a brain injury that would kill him within days.
For more than 100 years, people such as Vaglio’s survivors couldn’t win medical malpractice lawsuits against cruise lines because of exemptions created through a series of court decisions. The most recent is a 1988 ruling known as “Barbetta” that cruise companies such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival regularly relied upon to get malpractice lawsuits thrown out before trial. Courts said passengers should not expect the same level of medical care on a ship as on land, and ships’ doctors and nurses were private contractors beyond the cruise lines’ direct control.
Now, a federal appeals court considering the Vaglio case has ruled the exemption should no longer apply. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which has jurisdiction over the major Florida-based cruise lines — recently decided Barbetta is outdated law… (more)
EDITOR: Irresponsible health care on board has made many, especially the elderly, hesitant about taking cruises. Now that the cruise lines will be held responsible for malpractice, treatment should improve. This can be win-win for both sides.
