TALLAHASSEE — A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected allegations of false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress after crew members were forced to remain on board a Celebrity Cruises ship during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Miami-based cruise line in the lawsuit filed by crew members who wanted to return to their homes in the Philippines. The cruise industry temporarily shut down in 2020 to try to prevent spread of the disease after the pandemic hit.
Ryan Maunes Maglana and Francis Karl Bugayong, who worked on Celebrity’s Millennium cruise ship, filed the lawsuit in 2020 in South Florida. Tuesday’s opinion said passengers were able to leave the ship on Feb. 10, 2020, in Singapore but crew members remained on board as it crossed the Pacific Ocean, ultimately docking in Mexico.
On March 14, 2020, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a “no sail order” that suspended cruise-ship operations from U.S. ports, the opinion said. Maglana, Bugayong and many other Filipino crew members were denied permission to leave the ship, which traveled to a bay off the San Diego coast and anchored.
While the ship was anchored, Maglana was accused of taking a bottle of scotch from a ship bar and sharing it with Bugayong, the opinion said. They were fired but could not leave the ship.
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Celebrity on May 3, 2020, certified compliance with a federal protocol to allow crew members to return to their home countries. On May 21, 2020, as Filipino crew members remained on the ship, Maglana filed an initial version of the lawsuit, the opinion said. Several days later, Celebrity sent Maglana, Bugayong, and 200 other Filipino crewmembers to the Philippines on a charter flight.
The lawsuit, later joined by Bugayong, made a series of allegations including false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez dismissed the false-imprisonment and emotional-distress allegations in 2023, after other issues in the case, such as unpaid wages, were sent to arbitration.
The appeals-court panel Tuesday, upheld Martinez’s decision on the false-imprisonment and emotional-distress issues, saying, in part, that Celebrity’s “conduct was not outrageous.”
“The No Sail Order prevented Celebrity from repatriating its Filipino crew for over half the time they remained confined on the ship,” said the 20-page opinion, written by Chief Judge William Pryor and joined by Judges Britt Grant and Robert Luck. “After the order lifted, Celebrity worked within the Centers for Disease Control’s strict protocol to repatriate its crew.
“To be sure, the pandemic forced Maglana and Bugayong into an unenviable position: They were trapped for months on a cruise ship without guidance about when they might return home. But the pandemic also gave Celebrity the unenviable job of repatriating thousands of crewmen to their homes around the globe — all while making sure that none encountered a member of the public. And, like the seamen, Celebrity faced a rapidly evolving crisis and changing guidelines. That Celebrity did not do this difficult job perfectly or as quickly as Maglana and Bugayong would have liked does not mean that its behavior was outrageous.”
