Cruise ship passenger dies after being served 33 drinks, never flagged

I think this is a slippery slope. What about people eating insane amounts of food and dying as a result? Examples: someone eating a food they are very allergic to, someone with a peanut allergy eating a nut mixture containing peanuts (knowingly or not), an obese person giving themself a heart attack by overeating, etc.?

If this was advertised as an "all you can drink" cruise, obviously a dumb idea but I guess it was legal, there's no legal case I can see against the cruise line.

And I'm not defending Royal Caribbean. I once went on one of their cruises and thought it was terrible. There were lots of things wrong with my room, and they kept the amenities down to a bare minimum. So I'm not surprised they were involved in something like this.
 

On Royal Caribbean cruises, you can pay extra to have an unlimited drink package. However, when you go to any bar, they scan your card that they give you. It would show how many drinks he had that day. I would think that any cruise line would have trained their employees to watch for excessive drinking.
 
As far as I'm aware, once the boat has passed the 12 mile limit off the shore they are into international waters, and maritime law is then the yardstick. I don't think maritime law concerns itself with the state of passengers who decide to drink themselves to death, although it is quite hard on Captains who get drunk while on duty.
 

robin416 said:
OK, we now know how this lawsuit ends without any doubt or very little.

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/why-california-cruise-trip-prone-deaths-on-board-21235674.php

And a comment was made they are complaining he was kept in a morgue cooler. Duh! Where were the supposed to keep him? In their room?
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They would've complained if the medivac'd the body off the ship to port city morgue because they average $15K at least. Maybe they should've done that but the ship probably didn't want the passengers to see a body bag being loaded onto to a chopper.

In the end it was the drinkers fault for consuming too much.
 
I can't quite figure out how the coroner found this basically a murder. Ran a whole list of reasons the dude would/could die. What did he base asphyxia as being the cause of death?
 
RadishRose said:
In my State, it's against the law to serve a drunk person.
When inebriated, a person has lost the ability to decide for himself.
To keep serving that person for profit is illegal.
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That's the law in New York, too, I believe. There was a case in the past few years of a bar in my hometown of Syracuse being sued for overserving a clearly intoxicated patron who then went out and killed a pedestrian while driving home.

All the articles I found were on Syracuse.com, which has a paywall, so I can't access them or share them.
 
I'm no fan of cruise ships. You could not pay me to set foot on one. Well I'll take that back. Maybe if you offered me a lot of money. :) I'd do it for $10,000 a day. So for $70,000 I would go on a one week cruise. Provided payment was in cash, unmarked $100 bills, not reported to the IRS.

However, those Royal Carribean cruise ships are huge. They can carry 5,000 plus passengers. How are they expected to keep track of how many drinks one moron has?
 
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The coroner ruled the death a homicide. This part of the definition stood out to me.

"It simply describes the act of one person causing another's death, not necessarily a crime."

The article describes being constrained by full body weight. Considering the mans weight & health condition I can visualize that causing death. No way for the people restraining him to know that doing so would cause him to die.

My best guess is the cruise line will settle this for an undisclosed amount. And review drink policy.
 
I tend to believe people are responsible for their own behavior. This is sad, but who has 33 drinks?

Ironically, I purchased the drink package when I went on a cruise and had a very difficult time getting a few drinks over several hours. They also seemed watered down.

There are only so many bars available, so this really seems odd/unusual. Cruise ships have been getting really bad press lately....
 
Being in the military for 30 years, I have been with and around men that thought they could drink the bar dry. I had to search my brain, but I think the most drinks consumed I can remember is when I was in Norfolk and a few of us were going out for some food and drinks when one of the civilian welders working on a ship for the Navy invited himself along. When we got to the bar, we all ordered. The welder ordered 3 bottles of Yuengling dark.

I guess it’s not all that unusual, but it’s not all that common either. All 3 bottles were emptied in the first 20 minutes. I didn’t keep count of the drinks he put down, but another man in our group did. He said he counted 13 Yuengling’s and 4 shots. Compare that to my count of 2 Miller Lite and also 4 shots of Schnapps. (2 root beer and 2 apple.)
 
robin416 said:
I couldn't figure out if I should just like your post or grin at the antics of a drunk. Although the puking in the pool was rough first thing in the AM, sipping my first cup of coffee.
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I've seen it happen ... not pretty. Thankfully; I was not in the pool at the time but merely lounging close by :sick:
 
I know they keep track of how many drinks you order, otherwise one person in the group could get the all you can drink card and keep their companions in drinks all day without them having to pay.
 
Gardenlover said:
I know they keep track of how many drinks you order, otherwise one person in the group could get the all you can drink card and keep their companions in drinks all day without them having to pay.
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January said:
if yo u have a card and they scan that as you order, they could tell from any bar.
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OK, OK. I stand corrected. I'm still not used to this brave new world of technology where someone can track every move you make. :mad:
 
Trade said:
OK, OK. I stand corrected. I'm still not used to this brave new world of technology where someone can track every move you make. :mad:
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Me either and I still haven't learned to follow the money, which is clearly the case with the cruise line. They don't care how much the poor alcoholic drinks, but of course they would care if someone who hadn't paid up was getting free drinks.
 
Jazzy1 said:
Some of the video
__

That crew member would be dead right now if he had gotten that door open.
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I think whoever put the needle in him may face charges if the autopsy shows that the individual died from the sedation for any reason. Maybe he had an allergy to any of the components in the sedation medication or maybe the sedation arrested his breathing. I don’t know who ordered that, but the ship line probably won’t be happy. Why didn’t they ask the ship’s doctor?

If they could have zip tied his ankles together, the skirmish is over. He can’t do anything, not even walk. I have seen this happen to a man that worked out a lot, a real muscle-head. The people trying to get him calmed down put 2 zip ties around his ankles and when he finally realized that he wasn’t able to do anything, he laid down outside the door to his room and went to sleep.

Although the narrator in the video was pussyfooting around it, he really wanted to say “if he was injected with any medication, that was probably a bad idea.” I think he should have just said it. There’s no consequences for being wrong. It’s only his opinion.
 
@Della …haldol is used to control aggressive drunks. I worked many years in ERs and have administered many times. Drunk and aggressive patients hurt staff. We called it “vitamin h”. Cruise ships have no specialists and very limited medical options. I am sure this was a hot mess situation for all involved. I can not help but wonder where anyone gets off thinking unlimited drinks means drink it ALL?
 
I wonder how the Medical Examiner's report will fit into this. A combination of 6 or 7 things were given as possibly contributing to the death. Some will weigh heavier than others, but I'm still not sure which ones were the ones that killed him. There's lots of blame to go around. Most alcohol deaths are cumulative over a period of years, but some can happen from overdose. Can 33 do it? I don't know, but I would guess that's a possibility. Will the guy that gave him the shot get fired? Or will the guy that sat on him? Who told either one to do it? And for me the big question was for the dead guy. What was he thinking?

I think this will get settled out of court.
 

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