Cruise Ship Illness: Can You Sue the Cruise Line?

As soon as you boarded the ship for your long-awaited cruise vacation, you made a beeline for the buffet. The chicken dish you had was excellent—until the food poisoning set in. By the next morning you were at the ship's medical center with gastrointestinal (GI) complaints. You were sick for three days of your four-day cruise.

Turns out you weren't alone. More than 50 passengers were treated for the same symptoms, all of which eventually were traced to improperly cooked and handled buffet items. Later testing revealed that the culprit was norovirus, a common pathogen often responsible for foodborne illnesses.

Can you sue the cruise line for ruining your vacation? Maybe so. After taking a look at the types and frequencies of shipboard illness outbreaks, we turn our attention to what you need to prove to make out a successful claim.

Types and Frequencies of Shipboard Illness Outbreaks

Cruise ships are prime real estate if you're a virus or bacteria that likes to infect people. Respiratory and gastrointestinal pathogens thrive amidst thousands of passengers and crew packed into a confined area. Cafeterias, restaurants, and buffets, pools, and theaters are ideal breeding grounds. Once an outbreak begins, it can be exceptionally difficult if not impossible to contain.

Respiratory Illnesses

The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that respiratory illnesses—colds and the flu—are the most commonly treated cruise illnesses. With crew and passengers often converging from around the world, outbreaks are a regular occurrence. Some viruses—many COVID and flu strains, for instance—can be mitigated with preventative and protective measures like vaccinations, masks, and hand disinfectants. But compliance with these precautions is uneven and can't easily be enforced.

Legionnaire's disease, a type of pneumonia caused by the bacteria Legionella, is less common but can be more deadly. It's typically contracted by inhaling warm, aerosolized water particles containing the bacteria. Shipboard hot tubs are thought to be the most common source of passenger infections, along with contaminated plumbing and heating systems.

The good news is that the most common shipboard respiratory illnesses, while unpleasant, aren't likely to be fatal and can be treated symptomatically. Passengers who are high-risk—for example, those with preexisting illnesses or immune dysfunction—need to take extra steps to protect themselves from infection.

Gastrointestinal Illnesses

Gastrointestinal illnesses, sometimes called "food poisoning," are another source of shipboard misery. Most GI outbreaks—over 90%—can be blamed on norovirus, a ubiquitous family of bugs that are easy to spread and hard to kill.

In the cruise ship setting, the most likely source of norovirus infection is tainted food and drink. You can also pick the virus up from contaminated surfaces, where it can live for as long as two weeks. Symptoms of norovirus infection usually begin from 12 to 48 hours after infection. You're likely to be ill for one to three days.

Other pathogens, though less common than norovirus, have led to cruise ship outbreaks.

Clostridium perfringens is a bacteria that appears in bulk food preparations like buffets and cafeterias. It grows in warm beef, poultry, and gravy. Symptoms begin 6 to 24 hours after eating and will last for a couple of days.

Campylobacter, the most common bacterial cause of food poisoning, comes from undercooked poultry, unpasteurized milk, and sometimes tainted water. Illness is usually mild but can be severe. Symptoms develop two to five days after infection and will last for 2 to 10 days.

Outbreak Monitoring and Reporting

The CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) monitors and collects data on cruise ship GI illness outbreaks. CDC data show correlations between outbreaks and:

• ship size, with larger ships experiencing more outbreaks, and
• voyage duration, with longer sailings having more GI illness.

For sailing dates between January and May 2024, the VSP documented a total of 8 outbreaks. Six were traced to norovirus, one to E. coli, and the cause of one remains unknown. For all of 2023, there were 14 recorded outbreaks. Thirteen were traced to norovirus. One was caused by both salmonella and E. coli.

Can I Sue the Cruise Line for My Illness?

You don't have a case against the cruise line just because you got sick while you were on board. After all, it's possible that you were already sick when you got there. Or you might have picked up a bug during a ship-to-shore excursion. In other words, it might be that your illness wasn't the fault of the cruise line.

Unless you contracted Legionnaire's disease or another serious condition, you'll find it exceptionally difficult to win your case if yours was an isolated illness. Why? When you fall ill as part of a large outbreak, the cruise line and various authorities (like the CDC) will investigate to find out what happened and why. If you can show you likely were infected in the same way as lots of other passengers and crew, you have a better chance of a successful claim.

By contrast, a handful of isolated illnesses will more likely be treated as discrete, unrelated events that aren't the fault of the cruise line. There probably won't be any investigation, and you're unlikely ever to get to the bottom of what made you sick.

The Elements of a Cruise Illness Claim

To have a viable claim, you'll have to show that:

• the cruise line was negligent, meaning it failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances
• you became ill, and
• your illness was caused by the cruise line's negligence.

Was the cruise line negligent? The starting point for any illness claim must be the cruise line's negligence. Cruise lines have legal duties to make sure passengers are reasonably safe from foreseeable dangers. For example, it's foreseeable that improperly stored, cooked, and handled food and drink might be contaminated with harmful pathogens. The cruise line thus has a duty to be reasonably careful when it stores, cooks and handles edibles.

Similarly, it's foreseeable that surfaces in high-traffic areas might be infected with harmful viruses and bacteria. As a result, the cruise line must take reasonable precautions to keep the ship clean and as free of contaminants as reasonably possible.

Finally, when an actual or suspected outbreak happens, the cruise line must take reasonable steps to keep all passengers safe. This means implementing hand-washing and disinfecting protocols, quarantining sick passengers so they won't infect others, masking and distancing to mitigate the transmission of airborne contaminants, and more.

When a cruise line fails to take reasonable steps to avoid or mitigate foreseeable dangers like these, the cruise line is negligent. But negligence, standing alone, isn't enough to make the cruise line liable. To be on the hook for damages, the cruise line's negligence must cause passenger illness or injury.

Did you become ill? You don't have a claim unless you became ill, and you can prove it. Among other things, you'll want to get a copy of your shipboard medical records. If the ship's medical center won't give you a copy, make sure you find out how to request them from the cruise line. In addition, be sure to get contact information for the cruise line's claims or risk management office so you can follow up when your trip is over.

If you become ill, look for evidence of an outbreak and for signs that the crew is implementing responsive protocols. Pay close attention to things like whether:

• others on board get sick, and if so, what their symptoms are
• the crew is taking additional precautions against illness, like cleaning the ship more often or not letting the passengers serve themselves at a buffet
• there are lots of sick people at the ship's medical center
• the crew makes health announcements or warnings
• any passengers are quarantined, and
• the cruise deviates from its original itinerary.

When you go to the ship's medical center, ask the doctors and nurses if other people have gotten sick on the cruise. They might not tell you, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Was your illness was caused by the cruise line's negligence? This element, called "causation," is like a bow that ties together the other elements of your claim, negligence and illness. Your claim will fail unless you can prove that the cruise line's negligence—its failure to take reasonable measures to prevent or respond to a shipboard illness outbreak—caused or contributed to cause your illness.

If there was a shipboard outbreak, your symptoms were the same or similar to those of other sick passengers or crew, and the source of the outbreak can be isolated and identified, causation shouldn't be a problem. But if yours was an isolated illness, or was different from the sickness experienced by others, lack of causation can be a claim killer.

How Do I Sue a Cruise Line?

Suing a cruise line for a foodborne illness isn't like suing a local restaurant or fast food joint. For starters, your contract with the cruise line—yes, you agreed to a contract and yes, you're probably stuck with it—likely speaks to your options in the event of a dispute. Be on the lookout for:

• an arbitration clause, requiring you to submit your claim to arbitration rather than filing it in court
• a venue clause that specifies where you must file a lawsuit, if you're allowed to sue
• a notice requirement, mandating that before you can sue or file for arbitration, you must give the cruise line advance written notice of your claim, and
• a provision that shortens the time you have to file a lawsuit.

Expect the cruise line to make it as difficult and inconvenient as possible for you to sue. If there's a notice requirement, the deadline likely is just a few months after the date you sailed. Chances are you'll have to file your lawsuit wherever the cruise line is headquartered—probably Miami or another port city. You'll almost certainly have to file in federal court rather than state court.

What Is the Lawsuit Filing Deadline?

In most cases, it's one year from the date you became ill. If you're not absolutely certain about how long you have to file your case, your first call should be to a lawyer who specializes in cruise ship claims. The deadline might be controlled by federal maritime law, a highly specialized field that's unfamiliar to most attorneys.

What happens if you miss the deadline? Absent an exception that gives you more time, your claim against the cruise line is legally dead. Nothing you do will bring it back to life. Try to file a lawsuit and the court will dismiss it as untimely. The cruise line won't be willing to settle with you either. Once the filing deadline passes, you no longer have a claim to settle.

Damages in a Cruise Line Illness Case

If you succeed with your cruise line illness claim, you can expect to recover what the law calls "compensatory damages." As the name suggests, these damages are meant to compensate your for your injuries and losses. Compensatory damages fall into two categories: Economic damages and noneconomic damages.

Economic Damages

Economic damages reimburse you for amounts you (or your insurance company) are out of pocket on account of the cruise line's negligence. Common examples include:

• medical bills
• lost wages
• pharmacy charges, and
• other amounts you must pay because of your illness.

In a typical shipboard illness case, economic damages will be limited. Chances are you'll make one or two visits to the doctor, and be prescribed medication to treat your symptoms. Unless your illness is serious and requires evacuation to shore and extended hospital stays and treatment, you probably won't be out of pocket all that much.

Noneconomic Damages

These damages are meant to make you whole for losses that don't come directly out of your pocket. In the cruise ship setting, they'll likely include emotional distress and pain and suffering. Given the discomfort that can attend a raging case of norovirus, and the distress you'll experience having your much-anticipated cruise vacation ruined, these might be the biggest damages in your case.

Next Steps

You're entitled to compensation if you become ill during a cruise, and if your illness was caused by the cruise line's negligence. But cruise ship illness cases present unique factual and legal issues you're not likely to see in other kinds of personal injury cases. It's not something you want to tackle on your own.

The cruise line will be represented by experienced attorneys. To make it a fair fight, you should be too. When you're ready to move ahead with your case, here's how you can find an attorney who's right for you.