‘I felt bullied’: Cruise ship bar serves woman 15 shots and she blacks out, then sues, jury awards her $300k

A Miami jury has awarded Diana Sanders $300,000 in a lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines after she was served 15 shots of tequila on the Carnival Radiance. The case was built on claims that the cruise line over-served a passenger, and it took two years to resolve under maritime negligence law.

According to Brobible, Sanders was represented by Spencer Aronfeld, a lawyer who also posts on TikTok under the handle @cruiseshiplawyer. He said Sanders was served all 15 shots over eight hours. “She blacked out and woke up at the bottom of a staircase in the crew area,” Aronfeld stated.

The experience was deeply stressful for Sanders. “Waking up after blacking out and going to the crew and asking them for help and asking them to tell me what happened was extremely frustrating,” she said. “They gave me conflicting information. They treated me like a criminal.” She also said she felt bullied during the legal process and believed the defense tried to wear her down mentally and financially.

Carnival admitted to viewing the missing footage but chose not to save it

One of the most troubling parts of the case was the missing video evidence. Carnival provided hours of footage from around the time of the incident, but a specific 30-minute window was gone. This gap covered the time between when Sanders left the Casino Bar on Deck 5 and when she was found at the bottom of a staircase on Deck 0.

In other viral cases involving disputed or deleted surveillance footage, public skepticism tends to run high, and this case was no different. Aronfeld said Carnival admitted they had watched the footage but decided it was not important enough to keep.

Sanders had bought Carnival’s Cheers! package, which allows passengers to drink up to 15 alcoholic drinks within a 24-hour period. After her fall, she suffered head injuries, bruising, and emotional distress. Aronfeld argued that Carnival’s system for tracking alcohol consumption was not good enough, and suggested the cruise line should print the total number of drinks served on receipts and stop passengers from buying drinks back to back.

Aronfeld also pointed out that over-service lawsuits are very hard to win. These cases often depend on proving that a person was visibly drunk, which can be a legally unclear standard. He said there is often a tendency to blame the passenger, but he believes responsibility must be shared.

“It is not just about responsible consumption, but also responsible service. Continually serving a visibly intoxicated passenger is wrong; the jury recognized this, which led to the successful verdict,” he wrote. Carnival has not accepted the outcome. A spokesperson for Carnival Corporation said the company “respectfully disagrees with the verdict” and plans to appeal. So the case is not fully over yet.

As for Sanders, she feels the jury saw through the defense’s attempts to damage her character during the trial. Public reaction on social media has largely been in her favor, with many people raising concerns about the safety of drink packages that allow such high levels of alcohol consumption in a short time.

Dangerous situations caught on camera have been making headlines recently, much like a bear attacking a car with both paws in a terrifying viral video, showing just how quickly shocking footage can grip the internet.