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]]>Newlyweds Matthew Urey and Lauren Barham were standing on New Zealand’s White Island Volcano in early December when they heard someone yell, “Look.”
Urey glanced up to see an ash cloud ascending from the volcanic crater and thought it interesting enough to snap a picture. He didn’t realize at the time it would be one of his last before his and his wife’s lives changed forever.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCL | ROYAL CARIBBEAN CRUISES | 46.41 | -2.17 | -4.47% |
“I took a picture, a couple other people took a picture, and then heard our tour guide yell, ‘Run,’” Urey recalled to FOX Business. “And that’s when I just dropped everything and took off running as fast as we could … I was sheer panic at that point.”
Urey said they had roughly 45 seconds to a minute before the cloud caught up to them. The couple, wearing face respirators and hard hats given to them by the tour company, took cover behind some nearby rocks, Urey said, but they were soon in complete darkness.
“This cloud overtook us and completely eliminated all light. It was pitch black,” he recalled in painstaking detail. “Lauren was holding onto my wrist, but I had no concept she was there.”
Photo taken by Matthew Urey on Dec. 9, 2019, just moments before the White Island Volcano erupted (Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman P.A)
Urey, 36, and the 33-year-old Barham were on their honeymoon, which included a Royal Caribbean cruise through New Zealand at the time.
They are now suing the cruise line and the New Zealand tour company for what their attorneys from Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman call a “preventable tragedy.”
Court papers and Urey himself say they found out about the excursion in a brochure provided to them by the cruise line and bought the tickets through Royal Caribbean.
They never interacted with the New Zealand tour company until the day of the island excursion, and they were never warned that the volcano had erupted four times since 2000, the lawsuit states.
Neither the cruise line nor the tour company told them that just weeks earlier, the volcano’s “alert level” had been escalated to a Level 2, according to the suit, which describes that as being “the highest level it can be when it is not erupting.” They only found out about the change in alert level when they overheard a tour guide telling someone else during the excursion.
“Royal Caribbean did nothing to warn them or notify them in any way, shape or form. They have a duty to warn them so that their customers can make an informed decision,” said the couple’s attorney, Michael Winkleman. “And like Matt and Lauren said, ‘Had we known there was an increased risk, we never would have gone on it.'”
In an emailed statement to FOX Business, a Royal Caribbean Cruise Line spokesperson said, “We continue to support the needs of those affected by this tragic incident. We respectfully decline further comment while the investigation is still proceeding.”
Matthew Urey and Lauren Barham on their wedding day, Oct. 18, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman P.A
On the morning of Dec. 9, 2019, the newlyweds took a 45-minute bus ride, then a 90-minute boat trip through rough seas before reaching the mountain for what they thought would be a “once in a lifetime” excursion.
Urey described to FOX Business how, hours later as they crouched behind rocks, the volcanic cloud brought on such darkness that he thought he was actually blind. With the cloud, came the sound of rocks “pinging” off Urey’s hard hat “endlessly,” he said.
“When it was over, I could just feel my skin burning,” he continued. “I reached up to touch my face expecting that my eyes were going to be gone.”
Then Barham’s mask slipped off her face.
“I didn’t know this at the time but she had been yelling that she loved me,” Urey said. “She was breathing in the ash and she thought she was going to die, so she was yelling out that she loved me and that she needed help … it was agony.”
Of the 38 passengers aboard the excursion, 19 died as a result of the eruption. Two tour guides were also killed.
NEW ZEALAND VOLCANO ERUPTION LEAVES ‘NO SIGNS OF LIFE’ ON ISLAND
Urey and Barham spent 10 and 16 days, respectively, in medically-induced comas. They were treated at different hospitals hundreds of miles apart from each other before what Urey described as a “tearful” reunion at a hospital in Richmond after returning from their nightmare months-long honeymoon.
“I’ve never been that happy in my life to see her and the nurses there were wonderful,” he said. “They actually had gotten a takeout meal from an Italian restaurant here in town for us …. They set aside a quiet little room for us to have dinner and just be reunited in peace for a bit.”
Now, eight months into their marriage, burns cover 54 percent of Urey’s body and 23 percent of Barham’s, court papers show.
ROYAL CARIBBEAN THREW PARTY AFTER CORONAVIRUS HALTED CRUISES, 1,000 CREW MEMBERS ATTENDED: LAWSUIT
“We’ve kind of skipped over the whole newlywed phase,” Urey said.
The Richmond, Virginia couple’s nighttime routine now includes scar and skin graft massages and stretches to prevent their skin from tightening, he said.
“We can’t sleep in the same bed because we toss and turn so much from the discomfort of scars and grafts,” Urey continued. “It’s radically changed our lives.”
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A New York husband and wife, whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, told Fox News they joined a class-action lawsuit against China to hold the country accountable for concealing the origin and initial spread of the virus, which endangered the lives of millions of Americans and sparked economic chaos.
Lissette and Felix Conde appeared on “Fox & Friends Sunday” with attorney Matthew Moore to detail their personal experience with the virus and its impact on their lives.
Lissette, a Bronx medical facility employee, said she contracted the coronavirus after a series of “repeated upper respiratory infections” which began in February.
CLASS-ACTION SUIT SEEKS TO BILL CHINA FOR CORONAVIRUS FALLOUT
“They were not telling us nor allowing us to wear masks” at the time, Lissette said. “I work the front desk… dealing with 300 to 400 patients a day. So, who’s to say… I got it through one of the patients coming in because of no protection?” she asked.
Felix said he likely contracted the virus from his wife later and has been unable to work, suffering financial losses from his closed businesses.
“I run a martial arts school and I run a canine school… can’t do that,” he said. “Financially, it’s bad.”
The husband and wife said the virus not only forced them to keep their distance from their 14-year-old daughter, who has been quarantined “on the other side of the house,” but also had a profound impact on their extended family.
MISSOURI AG EXPLAINS LAWSUIT AGAINST CHINA
“I stay away from my wife because I have no symptoms at the moment [and] she’s constantly coughing and short of breath,” Felix said. “I have a 90-year-old mother who we can’t see, try to see her through FaceTime as best we can, and family members on my wife’s side have passed away, so the impact has been pretty big.”
Moore said the Condes and over 10,000 other people were bringing the suit to hold China accountable, and applauded the couple’s willingness to “stand up to a world superpower.”
“The simple fact here is, China lied and people died, and it’s just not okay,” he said. “We’re suing the Chinese government and we’re suing the Chinese Communist Party because we want the truth, we want to get justice and we want to make China accountable for what they’ve done. So, we’ve filed two class-actions. The first one filed on March 12th, we’ve had over 10,000 people join our suit so far, and it’s people like Felix and Lissette who are heroic and willing to stand up to a world superpower and really put themselves out there and make sure that China is accountable.”
Moore said the suit took advantage of limited exceptions in U.S. law that allowed Americans to sue other governments, noting that the “Chinese Communist Party is an independent organization, and they can be sued directly for what they’ve done here.”
CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE
“They can’t hide behind being a foreign state and sovereign immunity,” he continued. “They can definitely be held accountable. And, it’s been done before, people have sued countries before. It’s possible, and there’s a clear path to justice because China has acted so egregiously here and they failed to warn us about a danger that has killed so many people and cost so many people their jobs.”
States including Mississippi, Missouri and Florida also have filed class-action suits against the Chinese government; other states are expected to follow suit.
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]]>The post Missouri is suing China over the coronavirus pandemic. It’s the latest conservative gambit. appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) sued the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China on Tuesday, becoming the first state to seek damages from the nation over its “appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction” that he says unleashed the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Chinese government lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of COVID-19, silenced whistleblowers, and did little to stop the spread of the disease,” Schmitt said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “They must be held accountable for their actions.”
Schmitt told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that the “responsibility lies directly at their feet” for the 229 deaths and more than 6,100 reported cases, as well as the economic suffering so many families in his state are experiencing under the stay-at-home order.
Schmitt’s lawsuit appears to be part of a growing effort, mostly among GOP lawmakers, to make China quite literally pay for the mounting pain and economic turmoil that covid-19 has caused millions of families in the United States or at least garner some publicity for blaming China, a goal of President Trump.
The latter is the most likely outcome since experts in international law say Schmitt’s lawsuit likely doesn’t stand a chance.
Chimène Keitner, an international law professor at the University of California at Hastings College of Law, said she did not “see any portion of this lawsuit succeeding under the law as it currently stands.” The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prohibits lawsuits against foreign states with few narrow exceptions, which Keitner said she doesn’t believe apply here despite the Missouri attorney general’s efforts to cite them.
“They obviously have some talented lawyers in the AG’s office, but even a talented lawyer can’t rewrite the FSIA,” said Keitner, a former State Department lawyer who has been tracking several similar class-action lawsuits recently filed against China by small businesses or health-care workers.
Pointing to China’s lack of transparency with its own people and the rest of the world during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, a number of GOP senators have filed bills that would amend the FSIA so that Americans could sue China for its failures.
It’s a movement that has drawn increasing support in conservative circles. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich summarized and endorsed the calls for litigation by various lawmakers in a Fox News op-ed Monday, saying, “The United States should pass a law making the Chinese government and its controlling power, the Chinese Communist Party, open to individual or class–action lawsuits on behalf of the families who have lost loved ones to the pandemic.”
A bill by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) would amend FSIA to allow lawsuits against any foreign state that “discharges a biological weapon.” Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have filed similar legislation, creating avenues for Americans to sue China or foreign entities for failures or deceit during public health emergencies.
But some critics have charged that the focus on suing China is simply a political strategy to divert attention from the U.S. government’s own failures to take more proactive and aggressive action against the virus.
“We are seeing a lot of people on the political right focus on the China issue to cover up for the U.S. government’s own errors,” Tom Ginsburg, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago Law School, told Reuters.
In an interview with NPR, Lea Brilmayer, professor of international law at Yale Law School, described Schmitt’s lawsuit as “a last-ditch effort to do something to respond to the political situation.” Like Keitner, she also did not believe the lawsuit had any shot at success.
Keitner said she considered the proposals by lawmakers to do away with China’s sovereign immunity to be a “total nightmare.” She said the more appropriate way to hold China accountable would be to create an international tribunal to investigate failures — not filing lawsuits that will go nowhere.
“Anybody who works in foreign relations recognizes that the minute you start stripping other countries of sovereign immunity, you are opening yourself up to lawsuits in the foreign courts of 190 other countries, potentially, that decide to do the same to you,” she said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang responded to Schmitt’s lawsuit during a news briefing on Wednesday, calling it “very absurd,” the Associated Press reported.
“This so-called lawsuit is very absurd and has no factual and legal basis at all,” Geng said at a daily briefing, the AP reported, insisting that China has proceeded in an “open, transparent and responsible manner.”
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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday after his state became the first to file a lawsuit against China, accusing the Beijing government of being liable for the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and seeking damages to compensate for “the enormous loss of life, human suffering, and economic turmoil” resulting from the outbreak.
“They [China] are responsible for this and the responsibility lies directly at their feet,” Schmitt explained. “I felt it’s incumbent upon me as the state’s chief legal officer to prosecute that case to the Chinese government.”
MISSOURI FILES SUIT AGAIN CHINA FOR ‘CORONAVIRUS DECEIT’
The suit in the Eastern District of Missouri follows at least seven federal class-action suits that have been filed by private groups. One lawsuit filed in Florida states that China knew “COVID-19 was dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, yet slowly acted, proverbially put their head in the sand, and/or covered it up in their own economic self-interest.”
“The responsibility lies directly at their feet.”
— Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt
THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, STATE-BY-STATE
“It’s become clear in recent weeks, the deception and misrepresentation, the concealment of the Chinese government and the origins of this vicious virus, that has impacted the entire globe,” Schmitt said. “The fact is the Chinese government misrepresented that they were aware of the human-to-human contact and transmission early on … they punished and concealed the evidence from whistle-blowers and the impact has been devastating.”
CHINA PLAYS VICTIM CARD AS LAWSUITS OVER ITS HANDLING OF CORONAVIRUS GROW
State officials told Fox News earlier Tuesday that outside of the health consequences of the coronavirus — Missouri has confirmed 5,963 cases of the virus and 215 deaths as of Tuesday evening — the economic shutdown the state imposed to reduce the spread of the disease has cost Missouri about $44 billion, according to one estimate.
“People not being allowed to see folks in nursing homes or [attend] funerals, people living paycheck to paycheck and have lost their jobs — it’s enormous,” Schmitt said of the pandemic’s impact.
Schmitt said that in addition to extracting as large a financial judgment out of China as it can, Missouri is looking to hold the Chinese government officially accountable for its alleged actions to exacerbate the coronavirus pandemic and potentially bring further facts about how the Chinese government handled the virus, and about the virus’ origin, to light.
“We feel very confident in the case,” he said. “We brought forth claims of a public nuisance … the hoarding of PPE [personal protective equipment] is one of our allegations … the fact that they were running the virology lab, they were running hospital systems…” he went on.
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Schmitt said he “looks forward” to receiving a response from the Chinese government.
“This is about holding those responsible for this worldwide pandemic, holding them accountable,” he reiterated. “We look forward to them answering the complaint, it’s been very specific. The factual allegations, as far as the timeline and representations and also our legal claims, we feel are very merited.”
Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
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