Two lawsuits over last year's Costa Concordia grounding off Italy that defendant Carnival Corp. sent on a hopeful cruise into federal court have been shipped back to state jurisdiction. The order came just 11 days after the same federal judge decided Italy was the proper place for a Massachusetts family to pursue a claim against the Miami-based company. Carnival tried to use the Class Action Fairness Act to transfer the cases of Denise Abeid-Saba and 56 other plaintiffs and Geoffrey Scimone and 46 others from Florida to federal jurisdiction.
"We are thrilled that we can now turn our attention to litigating the facts of this case before a Florida state court where the plaintiffs can expect their interests will be protected rather than in Italy where the courts are notoriously slow and cases for mass torts such as shipwrecks have taken as long as 30 years without final decisions," Bern said.
It's interesting to see the jurisdictional venue on this case changed from originally being held in Florida, then sent to Italy, and then returned to Florida. Insiders claim that Carnival had a better chance in Italy than they do in the US under federal court.
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