He came back from his cruise with a severed finger. Now he's suing this major line.
A Carnival Cruise Line passenger is suing the line’s parent company after his finger was severed when his cabin’s balcony door slammed shut.
William Tuttle was injured after the door unexpectedly closed “with substantial force” as he reentered his stateroom from the balcony, hitting his right index finger, according to the Oct. 11 suit filed in federal court in Florida. Tuttle, who lives in Georgia, was sailing on the line’s Carnival Horizon ship when the incident occurred in September 2022, the complaint said.
The suit alleged the line allowed Tuttle to enter the cabin “when it knew or should have known that the subject cabin balcony door was malfunctioning and the calibration of the regulator of the door and/or the closing mechanism was not properly adjusted resulting in an unreasonably dangerous condition.”
As a result, he faced severe injuries that caused pain and suffering, amputation, disability, loss of independence and other repercussions. The suit accused Carnival of negligent failure to maintain and negligent design.
He is seeking a jury trial and damages exceeding $75,000 “exclusive of interest, costs and attorney’s fees.”
“There is an industry-wide issue among the cruise industry, where passengers are inadequately warned about the significant force with which cabin and balcony doors can unexpectedly close,” Robert L. Gardana, an attorney for Tuttle, told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. “The warnings provided, if any, are insufficient to appraise passengers of the true extent of the danger posed by these doors closing forcefully.”
Carnival Corp. declined to comment, citing the company’s official position that it does not comment on pending litigation.
John H. (Jack) Hickey, a maritime trial attorney in Miami, said that under maritime law, the burden is on the plaintiff to show a cruise line was “on notice” of the dangerous condition. That could take the form of prior complaints from passengers, comments from crew members in safety meetings or previous incidents (the complaint cites 11 similar cases among Carnival passengers).
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Cruise lines are typically “intimately involved” in the design and construction of their ships, Hickey said, and large passenger vessels like Horizon have workers on board full-time to do maintenance. Still, his firm has had numerous cases involving those kinds of doors over the years.
“These balcony doors are a chronic problem,” he said.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Carnival cruise passenger sues after balcony door severs finger
