A helicopter carrying airmen with the 129th Rescue Wing flies over the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California on March 5.  Photo: California National Guard/AP

A Florida lawyer whose firm was the first to sue a cruise ship company over COVID-19 has filed a second lawsuit, saying he is "swamped with inquiries."

"This is norovirus on steroids," said Jason Chalik, referring to the stomach ailment common on cruise ships. "Norovirus, people come back with a bad stomach; this, people die."

Chalik's firm, Chalik & Chalik Injury Lawyers in Plantation, Florida, filed the lawsuits in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Both target California-based Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. over its handling of the Grand Princess, which docked Monday in Oakland following a weeklong quarantine. In the first case, filed Saturday, the plaintiffs are the Florida parents of Chalik's wife and law firm partner, Debi Chalik, who allege $1 million in damages for emotional distress and trauma since being stuck on the cruise ship. The second suit, filed Tuesday, also seeks $1 million on behalf of a family of four from California.

Chalik said his firm represents six other families, including one in which a man needs heart medication.

"We're getting people calling us from the ship," he said.

Coronavirus has infected 120,000 people worldwide, prompting the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a global pandemic Wednesday. More than 4,300 people have died, including 32 in the United States.

But other plaintiffs attorneys were skeptical about suing cruise ships over the coronavirus.

"There isn't a lot of information about it, and the problem we've got here is it's such a new situation," said Adam Brum, of Morgan & Morgan in Tampa, Florida.

If the U.S. government prohibits a cruise ship from docking, "why would the cruise line be responsible for that?" Brum said.

Michael Winkleman, of Miami's Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman, said he turned down potential cases on behalf of passengers of the Diamond Princess, another of Princess Cruise's ships quarantined last month off the coast of Japan. In that case, he said, the cruise ship had its hands tied with the Japanese government's handling of the quarantine.

But, at that time, the coronavirus had just hit. Cruise ships should know more now about how to prevent it, Winkleman said.

"Now that this has become such a dramatically, hopefully, overblown pandemic, I think everyone's on notice they need to take additional precautions to prevent continued outbreak," he said. "Any large corporation or large place you go, they have to take steps to halt or limit the spread. Theoretically, if they're not instituting or following policies and procedures to contain the outbreak, they could face liability."

Chalik's lawsuits allege negligence and gross negligence, insisting that Princess Cruise knew what to do after the handling of the Diamond Princess, in which 700 passengers and crew got coronavirus.

On the Grand Princess, ship personnel only asked passengers boarding the ship Feb. 21 to fill out a form about whether they felt sick, Chalik said. They failed to inform them that at least two passengers on an earlier voyage on the same ship later tested positive for coronavirus, including a man who was the first to die in California from the illness. Another 62 passengers and crew from that ship were also on the Grand Princess, but Chalik said few of the 3,500 people on board underwent tests for coronavirus. Of those, 21 came back positive.

"We believe the cruise lines have a pattern of putting profits over their passengers," he said. "They're afraid if they stop running the ships they'll lose money, when that's what they should do for the safety of their customers."

When told that other lawyers raised questions about the viability of coronavirus lawsuits against cruise ships, Chalik replied, "Tell them to send the cases to me."