## Facts

- Mario Flores worked for Carnival Cruise Lines as a cabin steward whose nominal base pay was $45 per month and whose primary earnings came from passenger tips.
- Flores signed successive employment contracts that expressly anticipated substantial tips and stated Carnival would inform passengers of customary tipping amounts.
- Flores alleged he earned roughly $800 per week in tips on one ship assignment and roughly $600 per week in tips on a later assignment.
- After becoming ill on each assignment and being sent ashore for treatment, Flores was unable to work.
- While Flores was ashore, Carnival paid bi-monthly “unearned wages” of $161.97, calculated using the wages of the lowest-paid non-tip-earning crew member.
- Flores contended that the wages component of maintenance and cure should include reasonably anticipated lost tips because tips were a regular and expected part of his pay.
- Flores brought a putative class action for similarly situated tip-earning crew members who allegedly were not paid lost tips (or guaranteed tips) while off duty due to illness or injury.

## Issues

1. Whether, under general maritime law’s maintenance and cure remedy, “unearned wages” owed to an incapacitated seaman include average pre-incapacitation tip earnings when tips constitute the seaman’s principal compensation.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit reviewed the summary judgment ruling de novo, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Flores.
- The court reversed summary judgment for Carnival.
- The court held that a tip-dependent seaman may recover average pre-injury tip income as part of unearned wages under maintenance and cure.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with including average tip earnings in the wage calculation.

## Legal Principles

- Maintenance and cure provides three elements of recovery: maintenance (living allowance), cure (medical care), and wages (unearned wages during incapacity), and it is construed liberally to protect seamen.
- A seaman may obtain maintenance and cure without proving the illness or injury was caused by shipboard duties, absent willful misconduct.
- For the wages component of maintenance and cure, “wages” may include compensation that is regularly and foreseeably earned, not merely nominal base pay, when contractual and practical realities show additional earnings are an expected part of remuneration.
- When gratuities are an integral, expected component of compensation—supported by contract language and actual earnings—average pre-incacitation tips may be included in unearned wages.
- The proper measure of such recovery is the seaman’s average tip income earned prior to incapacitation, rather than an arbitrary minimum or a non-tip wage benchmark.

## Conclusion

The court required that unearned wages owed under maintenance and cure to a seaman whose compensation primarily consists of tips must include the seaman’s average pre-injury tip earnings, and it reversed and remanded for further proceedings using that measure.


Flores v. Carnival Cruise Lines, 47 F.3d 1120 (11th Cir. 1995)