COMMENTARY | The survivors of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster were offered a settlement of $14,400 each. This comes on the heels of the accident which killed at least 16 and still has 16 additional people recorded as missing. The captain of the ship Francesco Schettino is currently under house arrest and could be charged with shipwreck, abandoning ship and manslaughter.
The cruise ship operators’ company has offered a small sum of money to each survivor. The total offering is upwards of $59 million for those people on board, not including those that were injured or killed. The 4,000 or so people that were merely “inconvenienced” by the crash deserve much more. First of all the company should offer them free cruises for life. They should also be given compensation depending on their personal belongings damaged and destroyed. Some people have claimed to have lost thousands of dollars in personal effects that they deserve to be compensated for.
The survivors should probably band together in a class action suit against Costa Cruises and their parent company, Carnival Cruises. A victory in such a suit could be massive loss for the company and they should do all they can to try and settle amicably with the survivors. The initial offer of just $14,400 merely covers travel expenses and short-term “pain and suffering” costs. The company needs to come with an over-the-top offer trying to placate every possible person on that ship.
Carnival Cruises is in trouble because of this whole event, but this isn’t the time for them to be cheap. Most survivors probably were never truly in facing death; however, their mental state can’t be discounted. In a small-scale incident, the captain and company would certainly be fully liable and would be hook for tens of thousands of dollars per survivor. This event, while on a larger scale, must be considered the same way. The captain of the ship acted extremely negligently and his negligence resulted in a number of deaths and millions of dollars in real, and punitive damages.
Costa Cruises is responsible to cover both the real damages as well as the punitive ones. They’d better be very, very generous with their next offer, otherwise they could be in for a massive hit from a large scale lawsuit.
Source: CNN Wire Staff, Italian cruise ship survivors offered compensation. CNN.com