CARNIVAL Cruise included a prohibition against class action suits in the small print

[jberryhill]

53. Two things

1. There can be positive law which impacts the ability to contract or addresses specific types of contracts. The landlord tenant code is a good example of a set of statutes that specify certain rights and limits on what can be done in that context. Another example is where a contract relates to illegal subject matter - you can't have an enforcible contract to buy heroin or sell slaves.

2. Sometimes a contract will be so out there as to be unconscionable. The thing is, that category is a lot narrower than every teed off party to a contract would like to believe. Courts don't care if a contract is a bad deal or commercially unreasonable. In order to be unconscionable, the contract has to be pretty much designed to shaft anyone who signs it.

Are the types of carriage contracts used by cruise lines unconscionable? Probably not. Again, it's not like we're talking about the only bread seller in a hungry town. There are a lot of inherent risks in traveling on a ship. A ship can sink and kill everyone aboard. That's not some kind of unknown event. So, the proposition is this - you can take a cruise in comfortable surroundings with a lot of entertainment and food, go to warm places and drink rum, and have a whole crew looking after you for prices that are pretty attractive relative to, say, land based resort hotels. Part of the bargain is that one of the reasons they can do that at a low price is that everyone agrees not to hold the cruise line responsible for a lot of things that can go wrong - and are really no great surprise that they can go wrong.