Sponsors (4)
Official title: Provide authorization for nonpecuniary damages in an action resulting from a cruise ship voyage occurring on the high seas.
Introduced April 10, 2025 by Debra Fischer · Last progress April 10, 2025
The bill trades clearer, more predictable legal coverage for defined 'cruise ships'—helping affected passengers and ship operators—against narrower scope that leaves passengers on smaller vessels with less statutory protection and more complicated paths to compensation.
Passengers and families who pursue damages after incidents on cruise vessels gain a clearer statutory definition of 'cruise ship,' making litigation outcomes more predictable and reducing uncertainty about recoverable compensation.
Ship operators (including small cruise businesses and transportation employers) gain clearer statutory scope about which vessels qualify as 'cruise ships,' reducing legal uncertainty and compliance risk.
Passengers on smaller vessels (those under the bill's 250-passenger threshold) may lose statutory protections or clear entitlement to remedies, leaving them with fewer or more uncertain legal options after injuries or incidents.
The narrow statutory definition could push claims involving excluded vessels into different legal standards or forums, complicating access to remedies, increasing litigation complexity, and potentially delaying or reducing recoveries for victims and families.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Revises maritime-law definitions to specify which vessels count as cruise ships and defines nonpecuniary damages as loss of care, comfort, and companionship.
Amends a provision of federal maritime law to revise the definition of “cruise ship” and to add a definition for “nonpecuniary damages.” The change narrows what vessels count as cruise ships by specifying passenger capacity, sleeping accommodations, embark/disembark activity in the U.S., and that the vessel is not on a coastwise voyage, and it clarifies that nonpecuniary damages mean loss of care, comfort, and companionship. Also makes minor textual insertions in two subsections and updates the chapter table of sections to match the amended heading. The amendment is a targeted statutory definition change affecting how the law applies to certain passenger vessels and the types of damages recognized in related claims.