Tore Myhra was not your average cruise passenger when he fell ill aboard the Liberty of the Seas on Oct. 28, 2009. As a former cruise ship captain for the company, Myhra knew the drill when it came to severely ill passengers. Ironically, a medical evacuation that went wrong ended his career in 1999. But Myhra and his wife, who also once worked for the company, remained “loyal to Royal,” even a decade later. That all changed after Myhra contracted Legionnaire’s Disease, allegedly from the ship, and died four days later in a Miami hospital.

After Myhra’s Nov. 1, 2009 death, his widow sued the cruise line for negligent maintenance of its on-deck water system, which encouraged the growth of the legionella bacteria. Another passenger died from the same strain of the disease after a cruise aboard the ship in September 2009. According to the complaint, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined “both patients were infected with an identical strain of the bacteria and ‘that the only common source’ between the two patients was the Liberty of the Seas.”

But attorneys for the cruise line succeeded in getting the case thrown out of Miami’s federal court on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that the terms of the contract, as spelled out in the ticket, required any action to be brought in the courts of England and Wales. Plaintiff’s attorneys were outraged, pointing out that the United Kingdom has a $75,000 cap in cases involving passenger injury or death. Estate of Tore Myhra v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 10-15840 (11th Circ. Sept. 21, 2012); D.C. Docket No. 1:10-cv-23185-DLG.