An Inconvenient Forum

An Inconvenient Forum

Tarasewicz v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.

By: Arthur Crais

2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 84779 (S.D. Fla., June 30, 2015)

 The plaintiff is a Polish welcome who was injured while working on a passenger cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2012. He and his spouse files suit in federal court against 15 parties some of which are foreign companies and individuals. The defendants included Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., Royal Caribbean International, both Liberian companies, the Bahamian flagged vessel, the Norwegian captains and other Norwegian companies which developed and manufactured the scrubber system on which the plaintiff was working and a Welsh company. The defendants filed various motions challenging the subject matter jurisdiction of the court, along with personal jurisdiction, failure to state a claim and on various other grounds (arbitration being one due to an arbitration provision in one of the contracts between the defendant companies). The court dismissed all of the claims of the plaintiff on the basis of forum non conveniens and also for lack of personal jurisdiction over various foreign defendants.The court first analyzed the factors enunciated in the loadstar decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Lauritzen v. Larsen, 345 U.S. 541 (1953): a. place of the wrongful act; b. law of the flag; c. allegiance or domicile of the injured party; d. allegiance or domicile of the defendants; 3. place of the contract; f. accessibility of a foreign forum; g. law of the forum and h. defendants’ base of operations. Applying these factors the court held that the application of U.S. maritime law was strongly disfavored and then proceeded to apply a traditional forum non conveniens analysis: a. availability and adequacy of an alternative forum; b. private factors and c. public factors. The court then determined that all of these factors weighed in favor of the defendants.Having found then that courts in both the United Kingdom and Poland were “both available and adequate alternative fora” to handle the claims, dismissal was appropriate but contingent on the actual acceptance of either foreign court of the matter.The trial judge further found that personal jurisdiction was also lacking over three Norwegian defendant companies and also finally addressed defense cross claims, arbitrations provisions in contracts and claims for indemnity and contribution.