Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) recently emerged victorious in a protracted dispute with ABB involving the failure of ABB’s Azipod propulsion units on 4 of NCL’s Cruise ships. NCL was awarded $159 million in damages by the jury.
The litigation was initiated in the Miami-Dade circuit in 2020. In the case, Norwegian alleged that ABB was aware of problems with their thrusters but failed to disclose them and made misleading statements regarding the system after the first case of failure. This failure occurred on the Norwegian Star in 2017, the Azipod thrusters of the ship failed, leading to the ship being stranded at sea. This was followed by thruster failures in three other of NCL’s cruise ships.
The Azipod propulsion unit is a gearless steerable propulsion system where the motor for the drive is located in a pod outside the hull of the ship. The earliest ABB models had cracks appearing on the sheathing of the exciter elements, which over time led to the wiring being exposed. Norwegian’s lawyer team pointed to a 2012 report in which ABB field engineers had made observations regarding cracks appearing over time on the Azipod’s excitor stators. However, Norwegian was misled to believe that this problem was extremely rare.
After the first critical failure and cracks being observed on the thrusters of three other ships of Norwegian, ABB recommended repairs but omitted to mention that the damage that was already done could not be rectified.
After a trial of one month, the jury was in agreement with Norwegian, in that ABB indeed had made fraudulent and negligent representations of their thrusters. The jury also concluded that ABB omitted crucial information in their disclosures after the first system failure aboard the Norwegian Star. Norwegian was awarded $31.75 million in compensatory damages, largely for their expenses involving passenger compensations, and $127 million in punitive damages.
