A door on a Royal Caribbean ship crushed her hand. She sued for $20.3 million — and won

Royal Caribbean International may be on the hook for $20.3 million after losing a case against a former employee who suffered a catastrophic injury in 2008 while she was working on board. In August 2008, New Zealander Lisa Spearman was a marketing and revenue manager on the Miami-based cruise line’s Voyager of the Seas, which was sailing from Barcelona, Spain. While in port, the ship was conducting a routine fire safety drill in which some of the vessel’s semi-water tight doors — powerful doors that prevent water from flooding the ship — are closed, according to Deborah Gander, Spearman’s attorney. A nurse from the port who was unaware of the drill tried to open one of the doors with a handle. Spearman was on the other side. As the nurse tried to pass through the door, she fell, according to the suit, and Spearman lunged forward to help her. When Spearman put her hand on the handle to keep the door open, the sliding door lurched back into its recess pocket in the wall, mashing Spearman’s hand into a space only big enough to fit a pencil. As bystanders called the ship’s bridge to disable the doors, Spearman’s hand was sucked into the door’s pocket three more times, Gander said. The nurse was unharmed, but Spearman broke her middle finger and her index finger. The nails on both fingers were ripped from their cuticles. www.tampabay.com/...