$12.5M Carnival Cruise Settlement Gets Final Approval

A cruise line telemarketing class action lawsuit that ended in a $12.5 million class action settlement was granted final approval last week.

The settlement deal was reached between customers and Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., and Norwegian Cruise Lines, along with a travel agency named Resort Marketing Group.

Customers claimed that the companies violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending robocalls to individuals without their consent.

According to the Royal Caribbean class action lawsuit, Resort Marketing Group operated the autodialing system used by the three cruise lines to send their spam calls. 

Since the proposed settlement deal received preliminary approval, claims for benefits have already come flooding in. Bloomberg reports that 274,851 valid claims have been filed, making the average amount given to Class Members around $22.

Class representatives asked for around a third of the total settlement amount. After the lead plaintiff’s $25,000 award and administrative costs were deducted, this amount totaled $3.15 million. 

Final approval was granted by U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood who determined that the attorneys’ fees were fair because the TPCA class action lawsuit took around eight years, and involved serious litigation before a settlement deal was reached.

The approval for the Royal Caribbean class action settlement was granted even though 31 objections against it were filed, including two objections that sought separate awards and attorneys’ fees. However, Judge Wood denied these two requests, says Bloomberg. 

Additionally, some of the opposition concerned supplemental documentation that became required of claimants after it was announced that payouts could be several hundred dollars. The supplemental documentation was reportedly a way to ward off potentially fraudulent claims for Royal Caribbean class action settlement benefits. Judge Wood determined that this documentation was indeed valuable as a safeguard against fraud, despite protestations to the contrary.

This final approval follows a preliminary approval granted in July 2017. The cruise lines spam calls class action lawsuit was filed by Phillip Charvat who claimed that Resort Marketing Group sent thousands of robocalls to people who did not consent to receive them, on behalf of the three cruise companies: Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., and Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Allegedly, the spam calls were placed using an autodialer that allowed the travel agent to call many numbers at once.

Additionally, Charvat says that the calls featured a recorded message. According to the cruise lines class action lawsuit, these elements represented violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits businesses from sending messages using autodialers, especially robocalls, without the recipients’ consent.

Will you benefit from the Carnival robocall class action settlement? Let us know in the comments below.

The call recipients are represented by Matthew McCue of the Law Office of Matthew P. McCue, Alexander Burke of Burke Law Offices and Edward Broderick and Anthony Paronich of Broderick & Paronich PC.

The Royal Caribbean Class Action Lawsuit is Philip Charvat v. Elizabeth Valente, et al., Case No. 1:12-cv-05746, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

UPDATE: On Aug. 13, 2020, Top Class Actions viewers started receiving long-awaited checks in the mail from the Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean telemarketing class action settlement worth as much as $25.02! Congratulations to everyone who filed a valid claim and got PAID!