Widow claims Carnival Cruise Line hired unlicensed doctor
A physician working aboard the Carnival Dream wasn’t licensed as a doctor and should not have been allowed to treat a severely ill passenger who died two days later, his widow claims in a federal suit against Miami-based Carnival Cruise Line.
Louisiana resident Daniel Murphy was 55 when he and his wife, Mary Ann, boarded the ship at the Port of New Orleans for a fourday, three-night vacation in May 2018.
During the cruise, Daniel Murphy went to the ship’s medical center with complaints of chest pain, discomfort, profuse sweating, chills, stomach ache, diarrhea, lethargy and weakness, the suit states.
The ship’s physician, Dr. Chenna Kesava Reddy Yenuga Mandi, then 31, examined the passenger and sent him to recover in his stateroom for 24 hours, the suit claims.
Afterward, Daniel Murphy was given permission to go ashore to Cozumel even though he had not been not reexamined, the suit states.
“While in Cozumel, Mr. Murphy suffered a cardiac event and ended up passing away” at CostaMed hospital, one of the plaintiff ’s attorneys, Andrew Freedman, of the Miami-based law firm Lipcon Margulies Alsina & Winkleman, said in an email Tuesday.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and expenses, claims that Mandi misdiagnosed the victim or failed to properly use available resources, including a video link to physicians at the cruise line’s medical department in the U.S., who could have ordered Daniel Murphy removed from the ship and taken to a hospital.
A Carnival spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. In court filings, the cruise line defended Mandi’s qualifications and actions and argued that Mary Ann Murphy’s suit should be thrown out because she failed to support her claims.
Last week, a federal judge denied Carnival’s motion to dismiss charges that it failed to properly check Mandi’s background to ensure his qualifications and experience met the cruise line’s standards.
The suit claims Mandi is not a licensed medical doctor or a board-certified physician — qualifications required by Carnival and the American College of Emergency Physicians.
“Cruise lines routinely hire foreign doctors from countries whose accrediting standards fall below those of the U.S.,” Michael Winkleman, another of the plaintiff ’s attorneys, said in an interview
A list of Mandi’s credentials shows he earned his undergraduate degree from Dr. N.T.R. University of Health Sciences in Vijayawada, India, then earned a master’s in emergency medicine in New Delhi in 2014. He was hired by Carnival a year later, the suit states.
Carnival, in a response to the claims, argued that Mandi came to the cruise line with sufficient experience, including three years at Max Super Specialty Hospital, which has an emergency department and a daily turnover of more than 300 patients. When hired at Carnival, he was a specialist at Aster Medcity, “a full-fledged facility which provided advance emergency care,” Carnival said.
By the time he was hired in 2015, he had performed numerous medical procedures, including chest tube insertions, internal jugular vein catheterization, endotracheal intubation, suturing, nerve blocks and more, Carnival said.