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Forum Selection Clauses and Cruise Ship Contracts
On August 19, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its latest decision on foreign forum selection clauses in cruise ship contracts. The case was Turner v. Costa Crociere S.P.A. The plaintiff was an American cruise ship passenger, Paul Turner, who brought a class action in federal district court in Florida alleging that the cruise line’s “negligence contributed to an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard the Costa Luminosa during his transatlantic voyage beginning on March 5, 2020.” The cruise line moved to dismiss the case on the basis of a forum selection clause in the ticket mandating that all disputes…
Keep readingAn Exclusive Forum Selection Clause Cannot Deprive a U.S. Court of Jurisdiction
An exclusive forum selection clause gives a court a valid reason not to exercise its jurisdiction to hear a case. It cannot, however, take that jurisdiction away. Every now and then, judges get confused on this point. They start to think that an exclusive forum selection clause strips jurisdiction from other courts. This is not how it works. Private actors cannot eliminate a court’s power to hear a case via private agreement. The agreement merely gives that court a reason to abstain from exercising that jurisdiction if it sees fit. See Benson v. E. Bldg. & Loan Ass’n, 174 N.Y.…
Keep readingIt Pays to Know About… State Statutes Voiding Outbound Forum Selection Clauses
There is no question that the law of forum selection clauses can be complicated. There are, however, some issues that are relatively straightforward. When a legislature enacts a statute announcing that an outbound forum selection clause is void when written into a particular type of contract, for example, the clause is probably not enforceable. This sort of statute is only useful, however, if the lawyer representing the plaintiff knows about it in the first place. In 1983, the State of Washington passed a law voiding outbound forum selection clauses when written into timeshare agreements. Almost thirty years later, in 2018,…
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