Vicarious Liability

A recent Florida case that received prominent media coverage illustrates the issue of vicarious liability: The ship's doctor aboard a Carnival cruise ship failed to diagnose acute appendicitis in a 14-year-old girl with several days of abdominal symptoms. The patient's appendix ruptured, which eventually resulted in sterility. The parents sued the cruise line as a codefendant, which denied liability because the doctor was not an employee, a fact specifically disclosed on the cruise ticket. Although the doctor's contract stated that he was an independent contractor, the District Court of Appeal of Florida reasoned that in a claim based on agency, it is the right of control rather than actual control itself that matters. It therefore held that “for purposes of fulfilling cruise line's duty to exercise reasonable care, ship's doctor is an agent of cruise line whose negligence should be imputed to cruise line, regardless of contractual status ascribed to doctor” (Carlisle v. Carnival Corp., et al., 864 So.2d 1, 2003). However, the Florida Supreme Court subsequently quashed this decision because federal maritime law protects shipowners from liability flowing from the medical negligence of shipboard physicians (Carlisle v. Carnival Corp., et al., 953 So.2d 461, 2007).

Contact the author at siang@hawaii.edu.