Legal Analysis: Shipping Companies Who Employ Known Sexual Predators Could Face Massive Civil Liability Pursuant to Lawsuits Permitted Under Federal Anti-Sex Trafficking Statutes.

New York, NY

By: MLAA

After extensive research into recent case law surrounding the federal “Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA),” MLAA has determined that American shipping companies who have continued to employ mariners after those mariners have been reported to the company for sexual misconduct face potentially enormous civil liability if those mariners have committed subsequent sexual offenses aboard company vessels.

The most relevant federal statutes are 18 U.S. Code § 1591, the anti-sex trafficking statute, and 18 U.S. Code § 1595, which creates a civil remedy with a 10 YEAR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.

In recent years federal courts have broadly interpreted the definition of “sex trafficking” to include activities beyond traditional sex trafficking operations.

In Canosa v. Harvey Weinstein, a federal judge held that the plaintiff adequately alleged a causal relationship between The Weinstein Company’s participation in sex trafficking and the purported benefit received by the film company, i.e., that facilitating Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct “as a means of keeping him happy, productive, and employable” helped the company “achieve fame and reap financial benefits” by keeping Weinstein as an employee, and therefore potentially implicated the company in an illegal sex trafficking scheme.

In Gilbert v. United States Olympic Committee, a federal judge held that female taekwondo athletes alleging sexual abuse by prominent members of the United States taekwondo community adequately pleaded that USA Taekwondo and the U.S. Olympic Committee received a benefit under 18 U.S. Code § 1595(a) from their mere relationship with one of the perpetrators, who competed for those organizations in the Olympic Games and World Championships.

These cases are bad news for shipping companies and their executives who employ and have employed known predators, but they are also bad news for other maritime organizations. For example, labor unions (such as the International Organization of Masters, Mates, and Pilots (MMP)), and even labor union leaders (such as disgraced MMP President Donald Marcus), who have shipped out known sexual predators for decades, could face civil and possibly even criminal liability under these federal anti-sex trafficking statutes.

And maritime colleges that have received reports of sexual misconduct against specific mariners and specific companies, yet continued to ship students out to vessels where they knew, or should have known, those sexually predatory mariners were working, could also face huge civil liability.

The message to the industry is this: don’t employ known predators, and fire the predators and suspected predators you are currently harboring.