A Florida jury has ordered Carnival Corporation to pay US$300,000 to a California woman who was served at least 14 shots of tequila over roughly eight and a half hours aboard the Carnival Radiance before suffering a severe fall.
Diana Sanders, a 45-year-old neonatal intensive care nurse from Vacaville, California, was served the drinks between approximately 2:58pm and 11:37pm on 5 January 2024. She had purchased one of the cruise line’s popular all-inclusive drink packages, which entitled her to up to 15 alcoholic beverages in a 24-hour period. That works out to roughly one shot every 37 minutes across the session.
According to court documents, Sanders became visibly intoxicated during the evening, but crew members continued to serve her. She was described as swaying, stammering, slurring her speech and acting belligerently, all in plain view of serving staff. Shortly before midnight, she suffered a serious fall down a flight of stairs and was found unconscious in a crew-only area of the ship. Her injuries included a concussion, persistent headaches, a possible traumatic brain injury, back and tailbone injuries, and extensive bruising.
What happened in the aftermath may be just as troubling. Sanders says the cruise line gave her conflicting accounts of the incident and refused to hand over security footage. She said in a video posted by her legal team that she was “very concerned they would not tell me exactly what happened to me,” adding that while the ship had video from before her fall, nothing from afterwards was ever provided.
The jury assigned 60 per cent of the fault to Carnival and 40 per cent to Sanders, acknowledging her own role in the drinking. The final payout of $300,000 actually exceeded the $250,000 her legal team had originally requested at trial, a rare outcome in a case like this. Her lawyer, Spencer Aronfeld, said he had handled many overservice cases involving cruise lines but none that had gone the full distance to a jury verdict.
The case has reignited debate about the cruise industry’s relationship with alcohol. Alcohol sales account for roughly 33 per cent of total onboard spending, and onboard spending makes up around 35 to 40 per cent of cruise lines’ total revenue, meaning booze represents more than 10 per cent of a company’s overall income. Bartenders aboard many cruise ships also receive an 18 per cent commission on each drink sold, creating an added incentive to keep pouring. Aronfeld argued in the lawsuit that Carnival deliberately designs its ships with alcohol-serving stations in every corner to maximise revenue.
It is not an isolated issue. A separate wrongful death lawsuit was filed in 2025 by the fiancee of a 35-year-old Southern California man who died aboard a Royal Caribbean ship after reportedly being served 33 alcoholic drinks in under 12 hours. In Australia, drink packages on lines like Carnival and P&O are capped at 15 alcoholic beverages per day and are subject to Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) policies, though critics have questioned whether those limits go far enough when the financial model encourages passengers to drink as much as possible to “get their money’s worth.”
Carnival has said it disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal.
