URGENT ALERT: Were You a Passenger on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas?
If you were a passenger on the Royal Caribbean (RCCL) Symphony of the Seas cruise ship and had as your room steward Arvin Joseph Mirasol (see photo), you may have been illegally videotaped in your own cabin, including your cabin bathroom. This room steward is charged with placing cameras inside of cabins of the very passengers he was supposed to serve. In at least one instance, he would make excuses to come into the cabin during the day to fill the soap dispenser in the bathroom and then leave. Apparently, he left a wireless, remote-operated camera in these bathrooms. According to an affidavit from the Broward Sheriff’s Office, Mirasol admitted to authorities that his targets were generally teenage girls 16 years old and over, stating, “If I like who is in that room, I place it.”
The RCCL steward was arrested on January 25, 2024 when the ship docked in Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He was booked into the Broward County Jail on charges of six counts of video voyeurism and one count of possession of child pornography.
Call us today. You may be entitled to compensation for these outrageous acts by this room steward. If law enforcement has contacted you, that is not a claim for compensation. That is law enforcement doing its job in prosecuting this man. The cruise line is responsible for the acts of its employees and may be responsible for compensation for your mental anguish if you were videotaped and now know about it.
Maritime law does allow for recovery of the mental distress caused by this room steward. A federal statute under title 46 of the United States Code, the Shipping Act, allows provisions in the cruise passenger ticket that prohibit recovery of damages for mental distress in certain situations. But where the mental distress is intentionally caused by a crewmember – as the mental distress was and is caused on an ongoing basis here – the passengers can recover for that mental distress.
46 USC Sec 30527 provides:
(b)Emotional Distress, Mental Suffering, and Psychological Injury.—
(1)In general.—Subsection (a) does not prohibit a provision in a contract or in ticket conditions of carriage with a passenger that relieves an owner, master, manager, agent, operator, or crewmember of a vessel from liability for infliction of emotional distress, mental suffering, or psychological injury so long as the provision does not limit such liability when the emotional distress, mental suffering, or psychological injury is—
(A) the result of physical injury to the claimant caused by the negligence or fault of a crewmember or the owner, master, manager, agent, or operator;
(B) the result of the claimant having been at actual risk of physical injury, and the risk was caused by the negligence or fault of a crewmember or the owner, master, manager, agent, or operator; or
(C) intentionally inflicted by a crewmember or the owner, master, manager, agent, or operator.
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Hickey Law Firm is uniquely qualified. No other law firm in America has these qualifications. None. Hickey represented the cruise lines for the first 17 years of his career. Now and for the last 25 years, he has been on the other side. He brings with him all that he learned about the cruise business and about how cruise ships are run. Also, he is a specialist in admiralty and maritime law, the law which applies to all of these claims.
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Attorney John H. (Jack) Hickey and his team handle a wide range of cases, including but not limited to cruise ship accidents, admiralty and maritime accident cases, medical malpractice, wrongful death, premises liability, railroad accidents and car accidents. We represent victims from all over the nation, the world and the state of Florida.