Princess Chatter

"Foschi said Schettino first called Ferrarini at 9:57 pm (2057 GMT), about 10 minutes after the 17-deck Costa Concordia hit a rocky outcrop, tearing a massive gash in the hull.

"Schettino said that he had a big problem on board. He told Ferrarini that he had hit a rock and there had been a blackout. The captain said that only one of the sealed chambers was flooded," Foschi told senators.

In another call at 10:06 pm, Schettino told Ferrarini that a second sealed chamber was flooded "but said the stability of the ship was not in danger".

Schettino "was very calm and said the situation was under control", he said.

But at 10:33 pm Schettino said "the listing of the ship was increasing" and two minutes later he told Ferrarini that the ship would be abandoned.

"Ferrarini says he was completely surprised by the abandonment of the ship. He says that judging from the previous telephone conversations he could not have understood that the situation was so extreme," Foschi said.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Costa+Concordia+owners+fend+shipwreck+legal+pressure/6055033/story.html

"Rescue workers searching the site of the Italian cruise wreck for missing people have said that the time had come to accept that there was no chance of finding survivors.

"We have gradually to accept the idea that in those conditions there is no more hope of survival," said Italy's civil protection agency head, Franco Gabrielli, who is running operations at the site of the Costa Concordia."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9041752/Costa-Concordia-no-chance-of-finding-survivors.html

"North America's largest cruise lines are not answering questions about whether they allow captains to take ships close to shore in so-called 'sail-by salutes' -- a practice that some are blaming for this month's Costa Concordia disaster.

USA TODAY's Cruise Log sent questions on the topic Tuesday to spokespeople for the six major U.S.-based lines that account for the majority of all cruises taken by North Americans, and by Wednesday afternoon none had answered the questions."

http://travel.usatoday.com/cruises/post/2012/01/cruise-lines-ship-sail-by-salute/612784/1

"The owner of the stricken Italian cruise ship which capsized off the coast of Italy 13 days ago has admitted captains were sometimes encouraged to execute so-called '"nautical bows" as publicity.

The chief executive of Costa Cruises, Pier Luigi Foschi, is being grilled by a Senate committee in Rome over the Costa Concordia's crash.

Up to 32 people are feared to have died after the luxury liner hit rocks off the island of Giglio.

Mr Foschi told the Senate committee the umbrella company - Carnival Corp - did sometimes encourage its captains to sail close to the coast, saying it "helps enrich the product".

But he stressed that in this case the manoeuvre "was not authorised".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-26/costa-cruise-line-owner-questioned-in-rome/3794044

“Taking a tourist ship close to shore is allowed under certain conditions and is a practice adopted by all the cruise ship companies around the world,” Pier Luigi Foschi, chief executive of Costa Cruises, told the Senate on Wednesday."

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/25/transcripts-show-italian-captain-told-to-approach-shore

"In a call at 10:32 p.m. on Jan. 13, about 45 minutes after the ship struck a reef that ripped a hole in its side and more than half an hour after his first call to Costa, Captain Francesco Schettino told Roberto Ferrarini, head of Costa Crociere's marine opertions department that the situation was under control. Two minutes later he called back to say that he was giving the order to abandon ship, Foschi said.

Schettino had a series of telephone calls with Ferrarini, after striking the rocks off the island of Giglio. In the first call at 9:57 p.m., about 15 minutes after the accident, Schettino said that the ship had struck bottom and that there was a blackout."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/25/bloomberg_articlesLYCXRH6JTSEE01-LYCXR.DTL

"Costa's safety record isn't the only thing that should frighten passengers, say Walker and other legal experts. Also worrisome are the flimsy legal rights passengers have when they book a cruise, outlined in a legal document known as the ticket contract, which is available on the cruise line's website and is normally included with your ticket.

For passengers with future cruise plans, the contract delivers some bad news: If you want a refund, and you're within two weeks of departing on a European cruise, you're out of luck. (If it's anywhere between 44 and 15 days until your vacation, you can get half your money back.)

The contract is equally restrictive as it applies to the Concordia's survivors. The fine print limits the cruise line's liability to about $71,000 per passenger, requires that any claim against the company be filed within a year, restricts the filing venue to a court in Genoa, Italy, and applies Italian law to resolving the dispute.

For cruises from U.S. ports, Costa's contract limits the venue for filing lawsuits to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, effectively turning any lawsuit into a costly federal case. Other ticket language prevents smaller complaints from being brought together as class actions, further limiting passengers' access to justice, say legal experts.

Cruise line claims adjusters often send a series of letters to injured survivors, asking for more information. The time required for correspondence and documentation runs down the clock on any claims, according to David Deehl, an adjunct law professor at the University of Miami and the vice chairman of the American Bar Association's Admiralty and Maritime Law Committee.

"They're appearing to want to settle, asking for more and more information," he says. In fact, they're usually intent on paying the least they can under the law.

One place where cruise lines move quickly is in shoring up their own defense, Deehl notes. "They have their own civil defense lawyers who are often flown right to the ship to interview crew and passengers immediately, locking in their defense theories with sworn testimony," he told me."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sns-201201240000--tms--traveltrctntt-b20120124jan24,0,2392511.story

"Three alleged fraudsters have been caught after using the Costa Concordia disaster to try and fake the death of a woman.

Police in Hungary arrested the trio after New York lawyer Peter Ronai detected the scam as he represented the six Hungarian survivors from the disaster.

The attempted fraud was spotted when Ronai, who was in Budapest, was asked to take on a seventh case from the disaster."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091298/Costa-Concordia-disaster-Trio-Hungarian-fraudsters-tried-fake-death-woman.html