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[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-10259 ____________________ J.F., a minor by and through her Mother, natural guardian and next friend S.F., Plaintiff-Appellant, versus CARNIVAL CORPORATION, A Panamanian Corporation d.b.a. CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES,

Defendant-Appellee.

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NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: J.F. alleges that three fellow passengers sexually assaulted her in a stateroom on a Carnival cruise ship. She contends that Carnival could have foreseen the perpetrators’ crime and should have, but failed to, take preventative action. J.F. sued Carnival on a negligence theory, but the district court granted summary judg- ment against her. J.F. has now appealed the district court’s decision to us. We hold, in the particular circumstances of this case, that Carnival neither owed J.F. any relevant duty nor proximately caused her injuries. We accordingly affirm the district court’s judg- ment.

I A What happened to J.F. while aboard the Carnival Horizon is nightmarish.1 J.F., a minor at the time, was on vacation with her parents. During the cruise, she often spent time at “Club O2”—a

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24-10259 Opinion of the Court 3 designated hangout and activity area for 15-to-17-year-old passen- gers. Initially, the vacation seemed to be going well: J.F. got to know other teenagers on the Horizon, and she enjoyed spending evenings in Club O2.

Then things took a terrible turn. One night, after Club O2 closed, J.F. met several other teens—including three boys named Zion, Daniel, and Jesus. Earlier that day, Zion had been caught trying to smuggle alcohol onto the Horizon after a port excursion.

Ship security confiscated the bottle and told Zion’s grandmother that although the incident justified throwing Zion off the cruise, they would let him off with a warning. By evening, Zion was hang- ing out with J.F. and the rest of the group on the lido deck. Even- tually, J.F. and the trio got pizza elsewhere on the ship. When J.F. realized that it was nearly 1:00 a.m., she said she needed to check in with her parents. The boys offered to walk her back, and Zion asked to swing by his room to grab a phone charger first. The group didn’t encounter any Carnival security officers along the way. The cruise had 20 total officers, but only seven were working that night shift—three in the ship’s nightclub, one on fire watch, and three patrolling the ship’s 15 decks. When the group made it to Zion’s room, J.F. went into the restroom to get a tissue. After she emerged, Daniel locked the stateroom door, and he, Zion, and Jesus all sexually assaulted her.

The assault seemed to come out of nowhere. The parties agree that J.F. felt safe on the Horizon from the time she embarked until she was inside Zion’s stateroom. And the parties agree that USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 4 of 18

B J.F. sued Carnival. As relevant here, she claimed that Carni- val had negligently failed to warn her of the danger of and prevent the assault. Following discovery, Carnival moved for summary judgment, arguing that it couldn’t have been negligent because the sexual assault wasn’t foreseeable. Not so, J.F. insisted: There had been 102 reported incidents of passenger-on-passenger sexual mis- conduct on Carnival cruises during the previous three years—at least 54 of which had occurred in private staterooms. Accordingly, she said, the assault was foreseeable.

The district court agreed with Carnival that the assault wasn’t foreseeable and granted it summary judgment on J.F.’s neg- ligence claim.

This is J.F.’s appeal.

II This is a maritime tort case, in which we act “as a federal common law court.” Air & Liquid Sys. Corp. v. DeVries, 586 U.S. 446, 452 (2019) (citation modified).2 Accordingly, in assessing J.F.’s

2 We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Gogel v. Kia Motors Mfg. of Ga., 967 F.3d 1121, 1134 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc). In doing so, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to J.F., the non-moving USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 5 of 18

24-10259 Opinion of the Court 5 claim, we turn to general principles of the law of negligence. Chap- arro v. Carnival Corp., 693 F.3d 1333, 1336 (11th Cir. 2012). J.F. must satisfy the negligence tort’s four elements by showing (1) that Car- nival “had a duty to protect [her] from a particular injury”; (2) that Carnival “breached that duty”; (3) that “the breach actually and proximately caused [her] injury”; and (4) that she “suffered actual harm.” Id. Here, as is so often the case, the “[d]etermination of negligence” is “a fact-intensive inquiry highly dependent upon the given circumstances.” K.T. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 931 F.3d 1041, 1044 (11th Cir. 2019) (citation modified).

This appeal turns on the first and third elements—duty and causation. 3 We take each in turn.

A While at sea, “a shipowner owes the duty of exercising rea- sonable care towards those lawfully aboard the vessel who are not members of the crew.” Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlan- tique, 358 U.S. 625, 630 (1959). To be liable for a particular risk or danger, a carrier must “have had actual or constructive notice of

party. See id. Summary judgment is proper if Carnival “shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

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J.F. advances three theories of why Carnival had the requi- site notice. First, she points to cases in which we have said that a series of “substantially similar incidents” under “substantially simi- lar” conditions may establish constructive notice. Guevara, 920 F.3d at 720 (citation modified). Second, she relies on the principle that evidence that a carrier has taken corrective action may estab- lish notice. See Carroll v. Carnival Corp., 955 F.3d 1260, 1265 (11th Cir. 2020). And third, she suggests that Zion’s alcohol-smuggling incident provided notice of the later sexual assault. Respectfully, none of J.F.’s theories persuades us.

J.F. first argues that, as a general matter, Carnival was on notice that sexual assaults occur on its vessels with some regularity.

She emphasizes two particular data points: (1) that, in the three years preceding her assault, there were 102 reported passenger-on- passenger sexual-misconduct incidents on Carnival’s ships, of which 54 occurred in cabins; and (2) that Carnival’s former Vice- President of Security had for years asked company management USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 7 of 18

24-10259 Opinion of the Court 7 for more security officers but had been rebuffed due to money con- straints and “other priorities.” Br. of Appellant at 20, 24 (quoting Froio Dep. 53:24, Dkt. No. 87-10).

For support, J.F. cites two other cruise cases. The first is K.T.

There, a minor alleged that “a group of nearly a dozen adult male passengers bought multiple alcoholic beverages for her in a public lounge and other public areas of the ship,” eventually “pl[ying] her with enough alcohol that she became ‘highly intoxicated,’ ‘obvi- ously drunk, disoriented, and unstable,’ and ‘obviously incapaci- tated,’” before finally “steer[ing] her ‘to a cabin where they brutally assaulted and gang raped her.’” K.T., 931 F.3d at 1043. Notably, everything before the rape occurred “in the view of multiple Royal Caribbean crewmembers, including those responsible for monitor- ing the ship’s security cameras”—none of whom did anything to intervene. Id. We held that K.T.’s negligence claim survived a motion to dismiss. Id. at 1046–47. Accepting K.T.’s allegations as true, we concluded that “sexual assault on minors in particular was foresee- able”—and that Royal Caribbean had a “duty to monitor and reg- ulate the behavior of its passengers.” Id. at 1044–45. More specifi- cally, given that K.T. was a minor, we held that Royal Caribbean’s crew had a “duty” to “refuse to sell alcoholic beverages to any adult male passengers they knew were purchasing multiple alcoholic beverages for K.T.” Id. at 1045 (citation modified). This was so for a couple of reasons. First, Royal Caribbean had general knowledge of “assaults and batteries and sexual crimes, and other violence USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 8 of 18

J.F. also cites Chaparro. The plaintiffs in that case alleged that a Carnival employee had encouraged them “to visit Coki Beach” when the ship stopped at St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Chaparro, 693 F.3d at 1335. On their way back from the beach, the plaintiffs and their daughter “rode an open-air bus past a funeral service of a gang member who recently died in a gang-related shooting near Coki Beach.” Id. While the bus was sitting in traffic, gang violence broke out, “shots were fired, and [the daughter] was killed by gunfire.” Id. We held that the plaintiffs’ negligence claim survived a motion to dismiss. Id. at 1338. The plaintiffs had al- leged, in relevant part, “that Carnival was aware of gang-related violence and crime, including public shootings, in St. Thomas gen- erally and near Coki Beach specifically.” Id. at 1336. On these alle- gations, at the pleadings stage, Carnival knew or should have known that the plaintiffs’ daughter was at risk of being shot. See id. at 1336–37.

On J.F.’s view, K.T. and Chaparro together establish a rule that “statistics or reports”—like the figures she marshals about USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 9 of 18

24-10259 Opinion of the Court 9 sexual assaults on Carnival’s vessels—can establish the constructive notice necessary to support a negligence-based duty. There’s something to her contention. In K.T., we observed that according to the complaint there, Royal Caribbean had previously “experi- enced” intoxicated minor passengers becoming the victims of sex- ual crimes. See 931 F.3d at 1044. And writing separately, then-Chief Judge Carnes added, more specifically, that “publicly available data”—including “at least 20 complaints of sexual assaults”—“rein- force[d] the allegations in the complaint that Royal Caribbean knew or should have known about the danger of sexual assault aboard its cruise ships.” Id. at 1047–49 (Carnes, C.J., concurring).

In a similar vein, the panel in Chaparro noted that “Carnival was aware of gang-related violence and crime in St. Thomas generally and near Coki Beach specifically” and that “Carnival monitors crime in its ports of call.” 693 F.3d at 1336–37.

While J.F. is right that “evidence of substantially similar in- cidents” can demonstrate constructive notice, Guevara, 920 F.3d at 720, we’ve also emphasized that “a cruise line’s duty is to protect its passengers from a particular injury,” Fuentes v. Classica Cruise Op- erator Ltd., 32 F.4th 1311, 1318 (11th Cir. 2022) (citation modified).

The basis for that particularity requirement is that a “carrier by sea” is “not liable to passengers as an insurer, but only for its negli- gence.” Kornberg v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 741 F.2d 1332, 1334 (11th Cir. 1984).

Fuentes is illustrative. The plaintiff there had gotten into a verbal spat with another passenger while waiting to disembark the USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 10 of 18

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24-10259 Opinion of the Court 11 Our decision in Brady v. Carnival Corp. is also clarifying. 33 F.4th 1278 (11th Cir. 2022). In that slip-and-fall case, we steered a middle course between too-narrow and too-broad conceptions of the “relevant ‘risk-creating condition.’” Id. at 1281. On the one hand, we rejected the cruise line’s contention that the plaintiff there had to prove it knew about “the presence of the particular ‘puddle on which [Brady] slipped.’” Id. On the other, it wouldn’t suffice for the plaintiff to allege that the cruise line was aware about wet surfaces writ large. Rather, we held, the question was “whether Carnival knew, more generally, that the area of the deck where Brady fell had a reasonable tendency to become slip- pery . . . due to wetness from the pool.” Id. In other words, the notice issue turned “on (1) whether Carnival had notice that the area where Brady fell had a reasonable tendency to become wet, and (2) whether it had actual or constructive knowledge that the pool deck where Brady fell could be slippery (and therefore dan- gerous) when wet.” Id. at 1282 (citation modified).

In the end, J.F.’s case is much more similar to Fuentes than K.T. or Chaparro. Both K.T. and Chaparro included specific facts that put the cruise line on notice of a particular risk: in K.T., Royal Car- ibbean’s previous experience with alcohol-linked assaults on mi- nors and the extensive drinking in direct view of employees, see 931 F.3d at 1044–45; and in Chaparro, Carnival’s knowledge of the risk of gang violence in and around Coki Beach, see 693 F.3d at 1336– 37. By contrast, the data to which J.F. points don’t convey the same level of (or really any) detail. Based on statistics, she asserts that sexual assaults have occurred in the past, sometimes in state rooms, USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 12 of 18

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24-10259 Opinion of the Court 13 can signal that a cruise line is on notice. See, e.g., Guevara, 920 F.3d at 722 (holding that “a cruise ship operator has notice of a condi- tion—and thus a duty to warn—if a sign is posted on a ship warning about the condition”); Sorrels v. NCL (Bahamas) Ltd., 796 F.3d 1275, 1289 (11th Cir. 2015) (concluding, in a slip-and-fall case, that testi- mony showing “that warning signs were sometimes posted on the pool deck after rain” was “enough to withstand summary judg- ment as to notice”); Carroll, 955 F.3d at 1265 (holding that a negli- gence claim survived summary judgment because “there [wa]s ev- idence reflecting that Carnival took corrective measures to prevent people from tripping over the lounge chairs”).

But in our corrective-action cases, we’ve been similarly at- tentive to defining the purported risk at the right level of specificity.

Carroll, for example, focused on Carnival’s awareness that chairs on a particular section of the ship tended to get in passengers’ way. In that case we noted both (1) that a Carnival supervisor “testified that the lounge chairs on Deck 11 were supposed to be arranged in the upright position, and [that] he was instructed (and trained other employees that he supervised) to make sure that the chairs were not protruding into or blocking the walkway,” and (2) that a Car- nival security officer “testified that part of her duties included pa- trolling Deck 11 and moving any lounge chairs that were blocking the walkway.” 955 F.3d at 1266. On these facts, we held that Car- nival was on notice that its passengers faced a tripping risk on Deck 11. See id. at 1265–66. Importantly, though, we didn’t suggest that Carnival was on notice that passengers were likely to trip on chairs anywhere on the ship. See id. at 1263, 1266. Similarly, in Guevara USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 14 of 18

Carnival’s sexual assault policy isn’t the kind of particular- ized corrective action that constituted evidence of notice in Carroll or Guevara. True, as J.F. points out, Carnival worked with consult- ants to develop assault-prevention policies, including a sexual-pred- ator screening process. But any risk of which this corrective action might have put Carnival on notice either is defined at too high a level of generality or doesn’t match up with the facts here. It would be one thing if a known sexual predator had assaulted J.F.—Carni- val’s policies seem to be aimed at mitigating that kind of danger.

But J.F. doesn’t argue that Zion, Daniel, or Jesus were repeat of- fenders. Because there isn’t a sufficient “connection between the [corrective action] and the danger,” Guevara, 920 F.3d at 721, Car- nival’s assault-prevention procedures don’t show that the cruise line had notice of the risk to J.F.

Lastly, J.F. points to Zion’s failed attempt to smuggle alco- hol onto the ship. According to her, sneaking booze aboard vio- lates Carnival policy—and in keeping with this policy, Carnival se- curity should have removed Zion from the Horizon. At the very USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 15 of 18

24-10259 Opinion of the Court 15 least, she insists, Carnival should have quarantined Zion or im- posed a curfew on him. We take J.F.’s point to be that the alcohol- smuggling incident put Carnival on notice that having Zion on the ship was risky.

We aren’t persuaded. One failed attempt to smuggle alco- hol on board isn’t a sign that a passenger is poised to commit sexual assault. A “single incident” can’t “constitute constructive notice” of a risk when the incident is completely “different in kind” from the risk. Fuentes, 32 F.4th at 1320. Zion’s alcohol smuggling has no meaningful connection to the subsequent assault on J.F.: Carnival couldn’t possibly have predicted on the basis of a single non-violent breach of one of its policies that a gang rape was in the offing. Ac- cordingly, we hold that the smuggling doesn’t count as construc- tive notice. * * * Even reading the facts in the light most favorable to J.F., Car- nival did not have actual or constructive notice of the risk that Zion, Daniel, or Jesus would commit sexual assault. None of the evidence J.F. has presented shows that Carnival knew or should have known about the particular type of risk faced by J.F. And be- cause Carnival wasn’t on notice, it had no relevant duty.

B Separately, a negligence plaintiff must also prove both actual and proximate cause. Carroll, 955 F.3d at 1264. In this case, causa- tion boils down to foreseeability. That’s because “[i]n admiralty the touchstone of proximate cause is foreseeability.” 1 Thomas J.

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J.F. advances one argument that fits most naturally under the causation heading. She suggests that, had Carnival invested in a larger security force, a “hypothetical security officer” would have encountered J.F. and her companions in the ship hallways and somehow prevented the assault. The theory seems to go like this: (1) Carnival could have employed more security personnel; (2) Car- nival could have assigned those additional personnel to night shifts; (3) one of those security officers, while on night shift, could have seen J.F., Zion, Daniel, and Jesus walking the ship’s hallways; (4) “the hypothetical security officer” could have spoken “to the group [in an] attempt to ascertain their destination and intentions”; (5) this interaction could have “serve[d] to remind all members of the group that security was present”; and finally, (6) this reminder could have “deter[red] any unlawful activity inside the cabin.” Br. of Appellant at 25–26. Alternatively, the “hypothetical security USCA11 Case: 24-10259 Document: 38-1 Date Filed: 06/17/2025 Page: 17 of 18

24-10259 Opinion of the Court 17 officer” might have “escort[ed] [the] teens back to their families.”

Id. at 26.

We can’t accept J.F.’s argument, which heaps speculation on top of speculation. As Judge Friendly wrote in one admiralty-based negligence case, “[s]omewhere a point will be reached when courts will agree that the link has become too tenuous—that what is claimed to be consequence is only fortuity.” In re Kinsman Transit Co., 338 F.2d 708, 725 (2d Cir. 1964); accord 1 Schoenbaum, supra, § 5:5 (explaining that an action can’t be the proximate cause of an injury “if the causal chain of events is too tenuous”). J.F.’s hypo- thetical security officer is too tenuous by far. J.F. hasn’t presented sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the assault was a consequence of Carnival’s failure to employ more enforcement personnel. J.F.’s causation theory is particularly strained at Step (4) given that, even on her account, nothing suspicious occurred in the open—things only went horribly sideways once the group was in private, behind a locked door. We therefore hold that the assault wasn’t a foreseeable result of Carnival’s staffing levels. * * * The sexual assault on J.F., as she describes it, was both tragic and depraved. But the question here is whether Carnival is respon- sible. We hold that it is not. Carnival—which oversees a vast fleet of ships, each the site of countless human interactions—couldn’t have known about or foreseen the attack. Accordingly, it can’t be liable.

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