Passengers who were on the Carnival Corp. Grand Princess cruise ship board a chartered plane at the Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California on March 11. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Mikal Watts has filed a lawsuit against Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. for its "lackadaisical approach" to ensuring the safety of its passengers of the ship quarantined over COVID-19 off the coast of California.

The suit is the first filed against Princess Cruise Lines by a plaintiffs firm other than Chalik & Chalik Injury Lawyers in Plantation, Florida, which brought four cases last week on behalf of other passengers on the ship, the Grand Princess, where 21 people tested positive for the coronavirus. As in those cases, the complaint filed by Watts, of Watts Guerra in San Antonio, alleges Princess Cruise Lines made an "extreme departure of what a reasonably careful cruise line would do," particularly given the quarantine of a previous voyage quarantined off the coast of Japan that led to 700 cases of coronavirus.

"The whole world is taking reasonable precautions to protect individuals from the coronavirus; Princess Cruise Lines failed to do so," Watts said in an email. "Even worse, it ignored vital information that its ships were contaminated, and thereafter subjected its customers to horrific exposure to a deadly virus." The complaint, filed Friday in the Central District of California federal court, seeks punitive damages and "past and future medical, incidental, and service expenses" on behalf of Debra and Michael Dalton, a couple from Missouri.

Watts is a prominent attorney in the personal injury bar whose recent cases including suits over Juul electronic cigarettes and Syngenta's genetically modified corn seed. Watts brought the complaint alongside another attorney at his firm, Alicia O'Neill, and two other law firms, San Diego's Singleton Law Firm and Andres Pereira Law Firm in Austin, Texas.

"Princess Cruises failed to live up to the most basic duty of providing a safe ship to Debra and Michael Dalton," the firms said in an emailed statement. "After the disastrous manner in which they handled the COVID-19 virus outbreak on the Grand Princess in Japan, Princess Cruises should have suspended all future cruises, or at the very least, made sure they had policies in place to prevent exposure and outbreaks. It did neither, and Debra and Michael are suffering the consequences."

Coronavirus has infected 168,000 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. More than 6,600 people have died, including 41 in the United States.

The Grand Princess just completed disembarking 3,500 passengers and crew after a weeklong quarantine near Oakland, California.

The Watts complaint mirrors allegations in last week's lawsuits, including the first brought against a cruise ship over COVID-19. The suits allege Princess Cruise Lines was negligent in its screening of passengers, particularly given its knowledge of the coronavirus on the Diamond Princess.

"It would only stand to reason, having experienced such a traumatic outbreak on board one of its vessels less than a month prior to plaintiffs' voyage on board the Grand Princess, that Princess would have learned to take all necessary precautions to keep its passengers, crew, and the general public safe," the complaint says. "Unfortunately, Princess did no such thing."

On the Grand Princess, ship personnel only asked passengers boarding the ship to "fill out a piece of paper confirming they were not sick," says the Watts complaint. They also failed to inform them that at least two passengers on an earlier voyage on the same ship had symptoms of coronavirus, even sending emails to those disembarking that ship about potential exposure to COVID-19. Another 62 passengers and crew from that ship were also on the Grand Princess.

Andres Pereira, the Austin lawyer on the complaint, said the group would file more lawsuits "both from this ship and any other cruise passengers that have been aboard cruise ships and had outbreaks."