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Cruise Lines Use Law and Contracts to Limit Liability

An Italian consumer and environmental group, Codacons, has announced that it is preparing a class-action lawsuit and that more than 70 passengers who were on board the ship that ran aground late Friday off the Tuscany coast have already signed on as plaintiffs. Other suits are sure to come.

Anyone trying to sue Costa Concodia’s corporate parent, Carnival Cruise Lines, though, will find that the company is stoutly protected by international law and by a carefully worded contract that passengers accept when they buy their tickets.

For its part, the company is heaping blame on the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, calling the accident “human error” and contending that the captain diverted the ship from its authorized route. The company, based in Miami, did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Such forceful criticism of the captain may be intended to help the company avoid liability under international agreements like the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims, said Vincent Foley, an admiralty lawyer in New York. The convention is referred to on the Web site of the International Maritime Organization as “a virtually unbreakable system of limiting liability” for the owners of ships after accidents.

That limitation on liability can be set aside in cases of egregious acts by the vessel’s owner, in the language of the convention, if “it is proved that the loss resulted from his personal act or omission, committed with the intent to cause such a loss, or recklessly and with knowledge that such loss would probably result.”

But Mr. Foley said the egregious acts must be the owner’s. If the captain disregarded his duties, the company could argue that it was not responsible for his behavior. Whether Captain Schettino’s actions “can be imputed to the owner to break limitation is, I think, a key issue,” Mr. Foley said.

To Jack Hickey, a maritime lawyer in Miami who is working with an Italian lawyer to represent Costa Concordia passengers, the cruise line’s responsibility is obvious. Referring to the captain, Mr. Hickey said that the company had “nobody with more authority or responsibility than him” on the ship, and that it was not as if a janitor had somehow steered the ship onto a rock formation. Besides, he noted, in an age when ships are in constant communication with their owners, the company should not be able to argue that it had no idea what was going on. “You mean you can’t track it?” he asked. “You mean if it gets that far off track, you don’t know?”

The issues in the case could be shaped by the highly restrictive terms of the contract that every passenger gets with his or her ticket, said Gerald McGill, an admiralty lawyer in Pensacola, Fla.

Cruise contracts are notoriously restrictive regarding the rights of passengers, and Costa’s 6,400-word contract is no exception. The Costa contract sharply limits the kinds of lawsuits that can be brought, where those suits can be brought and how much the company can be made to pay. All such provisions have been upheld in the courts of the United States, he said.

Costa’s contract states that the line will pay no more in cases of death, personal injury and property loss than about $71,000 per passenger. It allows no recovery for mental anguish or psychological damages. It bars class-action suits.

“If you read this cruise line ticket, and it doesn’t make your stomach turn, it should,” Mr. McGill said.

For cruises that do not involve a United States port, the contract states, any litigation must be brought in Genoa, Italy, and be governed by Italian law. But when it comes to liability, the contract says the company can take advantage of any limits set by international treaties or the laws of the United States, which are very generous to owners of vessels. If there is a conflict among the patchwork of laws and treaties regarding liability, it says, “the Carrier shall be entitled to invoke whichever provisions provide the greatest limitations and immunities to the Carrier.”

“That’s called the ‘the terms are whatever we want them to be’ clause,” Mr. Hickey said. “It’s a contract created by lawyers under this fantasy that the everyday passenger will understand what that means.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/cruise-lines-use-law-and-contracts-to-limit-liability.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Green Column: Palm Oil Companies Slow in Meeting Sustainability Goal

JAKARTA — Sustainability is the catchword in the palm oil industry these days, with many multinational companies having pledged to use oil only from sustainable sources by 2015. But with only three years left, they will have to move a lot faster to achieve that goal.

Palm oil, a key ingredient in a variety of major consumer goods like cookies and household cleaning products, accounts for around a third of the world’s vegetable oil trade. Interest in palm oil as an alternative fuel is likely to increase investment, with consumption expected to grow from 50 million tons a year now to at least 77 million tons in 2050, according to the environmental group W.W.F.

But that growth will take its toll on the environment, especially in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer. Palm oil plantations there expanded by 2,100 percent from the early 1980s to 2007, with the total land area currently devoted to palm oil estimated at close to 7 million hectares, or 17 million acres, according to a paper by the Center for International Forestry Research, based outside Jakarta.

Some experts say about 350,000 hectares of land are cleared each year for palm oil production — an area five times the size of Singapore. The land clearing releases carbon dioxide and destroys habitats for endangered species like orangutans, which are often killed by plantation owners who view them as pests.

As consumers pay more attention to the environmental damage caused by palm oil planting, pressure has increased on manufacturers to use sustainable sources. Unilever, McDonald’s and Nestlé have pledged to use only sustainable palm oil by 2015.

However, a scorecard released by the W.W.F. last month found that the companies that had promised to move toward sustainable oil still got only 47 percent of their supply from sources certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, showing no improvement from 2010. (The W.W.F. is a member of the round table’s board.)

Of the 87 companies included in the W.W.F.’s scorecard that have committed to switching completely to sustainable palm oil by 2015, many of them, including the Australian snack food supplier Arnott’s, have yet to purchase any.

Growers that belong to the round table have to meet certain criteria, like negotiating land use with local communities and refraining from clearing virgin forest, before receiving certification.

Retailers and consumer goods manufacturers have purchased only 44 percent of the five million tons of sustainably sourced palm oil in circulation, the R.S.P.O. said at its annual meeting in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, on Nov. 24.

Toni Jones, an Arnott’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that the company’s first shipment of R.S.P.O.-certified oil would be delivered in mid-December. The delay was due to changes needed to process it and difficulties in finding adequate amounts of “segregated” palm oil, which is separated from noncertified palm oil during production to ensure its purity, she said.

“Committing to certified palm oil requires complex changes to ingredient receipting, tracking, handling and usage,” Ms. Jones said. “Another complexity is managing all the recipe changes that will be triggered by the introduction of the certified palm oil.”

The slow sales of sustainable palm oil have driven down prices, making it less attractive to producers, and the W.W.F. said that without guaranteed demand from buyers, growers were unlikely to pursue certification. Growers in Malaysia recently called for a freeze on further certification until demand for sustainable oil increased.

Mohamad Akhir bin Man, the general manager at Kayung Agro Lestari, an Indonesian palm oil plantation, said planters were initially told they could get a $20 per ton premium for R.S.P.O.-certified palm oil. He says the current premium of between $2 and $5 per ton over regular palm oil, which goes for $1,000 a ton these days, does not offset the additional production costs.

For buyers, however, even the current premium can be prohibitive.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/business/global/palm-oil-companies-slow-in-meeting-sustainability-goal.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Cruise Lines Use Law and Contracts to Limit Liability

Green Column: Palm Oil Companies Slow in Meeting Sustainability Goal

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