Earlier passengers sue over virus exposure
A second group of former Grand Princess cruise ship passengers is suing Carnival Corp. and its Princess cruise line in a federal court in Los Angeles after a similar suit against the companies was filed this week.
The more recent complaint filed Thursday is seeking classaction status on behalf of more than 2,000 passengers who sailed aboard the Grand Princess to Mexico in February, a trip that it alleges resulted in over 100 coronavirus infections and two deaths.
The filing alleges the cruise line was aware of coronavirus infections on board another of its ships, the Diamond Princess, in Asia prior to the Feb. 11 departure of the Grand Princess from San Francisco to Mexico, but did not take measures to protect passengers from the virus.
The lawsuit does not allege that crew were transferred over from the Diamond Princess to the Grand Princess. It instead claims, “Defendants knew or should have known of the actual risk of viral contagion of COVID19 aboard cruise ships,” because of the separate outbreak aboard the Diamond Princess, which began when that vessel was docked in Yokohama, Japan.
No warnings to passengers were issued, and advanced cleaning and medical screenings were not performed during the Mexico voyage of the Grand Princess, the lawsuit claims, characterizing this as negligence in the face of the separate Diamond Princess outbreak.
In an email, Carnival Corp. spokesman Roger Frizzell declined to comment on the suit.
Princess Cruise Lines referred to a previously emailed statement from spokeswoman Negin Kamali, noting that it does not comment on pending litigation but that “Princess Cruises has been sensitive to the difficulties the COVID19 outbreak has caused to our guests and crew. Our response throughout this process has focused on the wellbeing of our guests and crew within the parameters dictated to us by the government agencies involved and the evolving medical understanding of this new illness.”
On Tuesday a separate group of 60 former Grand Princess passengers also filed suit in Los Angeles federal court seeking classaction status over what they say was the cruise line’s failure to protect them from the coronavirus.
Those passengers boarded the Grand Princess in San Francisco and headed to Hawaii in March after the ship returned from the February voyage to Mexico.
That complaint claimed Princess Cruise Lines and its parent company Carnival Corp. did not properly clean the ship and alert passengers to the risk of viral infection aboard the Hawaii trip after its prior voyage to Mexico.
That voyage to Hawaii was cut short after an outbreak of the coronavirus aboard the Grand Princess. The ship returned to the Bay Area and was stranded off the California coast for four days. It was eventually escorted to the Port of Oakland, and some passengers were sent to hospitals for treatment while others were quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.