Seattle Jury Awards $21.5 Million Over Faulty Cruise Ship Door, Later Vacated for New Trial

On November 26, 2011, the M/S Amsterdam, Holland America Line's Pacific fleet flagship, was in open water approaching Honolulu. James R. Hausman, a gold and precious-metals retailer from Springfield, Illinois, left the ship's penthouse with his wife to walk to a pool. He was traveling with his wife, daughter and a tutor on the opening leg of a world cruise that had left Seattle in September. Surveillance video showed him following several crew members through a pair of automatic sliding-glass doors when the doors shut on him, striking his face and the side of his head.

The ship's doctor first recorded a facial contusion and a chipped tooth, then diagnosed a concussion and post-concussion syndrome. According to his lawyer, Rick Friedman, later neurological testing showed a minor traumatic brain injury that left Hausman prone to vertigo and to seizures in which he spaces out for a few seconds to a few minutes, and that he loses track of what he is saying. Hausman, who was 61 at trial, completed the 280-day cruise and later sold most of his business. Holland America maintained that he walked into the closing doors.

Hausman sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in 2013, and the case was tried before Judge Barbara Rothstein. His lawyers argued that the fleet's doors were set to open at the last moment and to close within half a second after the sensors stopped detecting motion, faster than the manufacturer recommended. Holland America denied that. Friedman told the Seattle Times that the company had suppressed records of as many as 34 other sliding-door incidents over three years, including two passengers who broke their hips. The judge let the jury hear about 16 of them. Experts testified that a sliding door should never hit anyone, a 'never event' in Friedman's words.

After a nine-day trial, an eight-member jury returned a unanimous verdict on October 30, 2015. It awarded $5 million for past and future pain, suffering and emotional distress and $16.5 million in punitive damages, for a total of $21.5 million, one of the largest federal verdicts in Seattle in recent memory. Holland America asked the court to reduce the judgment as excessive and said it would appeal.

The verdict did not hold. Soon afterward, Hausman's former personal assistant told Holland America that she had watched him delete emails he was obliged to turn over before trial and that he had not disclosed one of his email accounts. After a hearing, Judge Rothstein found her credible and Hausman evasive, concluded the deletions were deliberate and had interfered with the defense, and on January 5, 2016, vacated the verdict and ordered a new trial. Richard Friedman called the ruling frustrating and disappointing, said it could not be appealed, and noted that retrial verdicts are often larger than the first. There was no retrial. On June 17, 2016, the parties filed a stipulation dismissing the case with prejudice and without costs, and the court closed it on June 20, 2016. No terms were made public.