In October of 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a proposed rule establishing standards for incidental discharges from vessels in waters of the United States. This is the first proposed rule to come out of the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act (VIDA), which was signed into law by President Trump in December 2018.
On March 14, 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a No Sail Order (NSO) for cruise ships in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, more than seven months later, the agency has announced that it will allow the ban to expire at the end of October. The CDC has replaced the NSO with a framework that takes a phased approach to resuming passenger cruise ship operations in US waters.
After a man drowned in the Santa Barbara Harbor while using a rented stand-up paddleboard (SUP), his survivors filed a wrongful death and survival action against the company and its owner in California state court. The rental company then filed an admiralty action in federal court seeking to limit its liability to the value of the SUP. The district court dismissed the admiralty action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed.
