Shipboard Medical Liability Case May Alter the Status Quo

First, the appellate court had to decide if it should follow the so-called “Barbetta Rule,” enunciated by the Fifth Circuit in Barbetta v. S/S Bermuda Star, 848 F.2d 1364 (5th Cir. 1988), which says that under no circumstances may a ship's passenger hold a ship operator liable under agency theory for the negligence of onboard medical personnel, no matter how much control the ship's owner exercises over its medical staff. As we discussed in Part One of this article, the Eleventh Circuit determined that the Barbetta Rule was not relevant to today's world, where principals are often compelled to answer for the acts of their agents, and where ship owners are no longer cut off from communication with their ships when they have gone out to sea. Quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes (The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev., 469 (1897)), the court declared that, ultimately, it “should not follow a rule of law simply because 'it was laid down in the time of Henry IV,' particularly where the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”

Having determined that the Franza case's ship operator could conceivably be held financially responsible for its medical staff's negligence, the court had to next determine if the facts alleged by the plaintiff were adequate to keep her claim alive in the face of the operator's motion to dismiss. Therefore, the court had to decide whether plaintiff Patricia Franza, the deceased ship passenger's daughter, had properly alleged either that the ship's medical personnel were the cruise operator's 1) actual agents; or 2) apparent agents.