The Right to Freedom of Speech Suspended Aboard Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas When Passenger Cautions Fellow Vacationers About Vendor Park West Auction Practices

Mark Jacobs, teacher and co-founder of Longview School in Cortlandt Manor, New York, his wife Elena Pousada, their children, Jessica and Ben, and his parents took a cruise on the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas in July 2009. They had no way of knowing that there were forces at work aboard that ship which would result in Mark being beached in Oslo, apparently in an attempt by Royal Caribbean to protect the questionable trade practices of their vendor/partner Park West Gallery who, it appears, is not able to withstand even the mildest of criticism. Since it is well known that Royal Caribbean profits enormously from Park West's sales aboard its vessels, the following outrageous sequence of events can at least be understood.

Mark Jacobs and Elena Pousada (left), Stan and Barbara Jacobs, Mark's parents (center), and Ben and Jessica, Mark and Elena's children (right).

The story is told by Mark Jacobs himself, who had had no contact with Park West in his previous cruises although he was peripherally aware of their existence on board ships he had sailed on, in the following interview conducted by Fine Art Registry® a week or so after his return.

Fine Art Registry® (FAR):   Tell me about the auction. Did they give you champagne?

Mark Jacobs (MJ):
I had previously attended a lecture given by the auctioneer: "30,000 years of art in 30 minutes". It was a sort of entertaining lecture about art where he told people about art over all the years and in a way previewed much of the art that was going to be sold at the auction. I felt that was a bit sneaky, to make him the art expert in something unrelated to sales and then to have him try to sell you some of the same pieces a few days later that he would then profit from.

Tim was the auctioneer. He billed himself as high up in the company, not the average auctioneer.

They did give out champagne for people who had bidder cards. But I wasn't there to see the auction. I was two or three floors up in the Latte-tudes Café using the wireless internet and able to hear the auction while my mother's email was downloading very, very slowly over a 45 minute period. I was hearing the auction in the background and getting more and more concerned.

FAR:   Tell me what it was exactly that concerned you about it?

MJ:
Listening to the introduction by the auctioneer, I immediately felt like this was a high pressure sales person making claims and promises that probably weren't realistic.

I was first concerned because of the incredible names and originality and signatures on their artwork. He was saying, "We have signed Dalís, signed Picassos, we have original Rembrandt pieces," and I was thinking, "Gosh, I've been to art museums that have less selection than it sounds like he's able to offer for sale on this boat today," and that seemed strange to me. And the second thing that alerted me was the high prices. He started off with the first item that was for sale, he valued at $12,000 and then said "We're starting the bidding here at $10,000." And then I heard that the bidding went up to $10,500 and I assumed it had been sold since the bidding was higher than it started at. But I came to learn later that just because the bidding went up doesn't mean it isn't someone bidding for Park West, so that it may not have changed hands.

I just heard more and more pieces of artwork being brought out at high prices with incredible names of artists that I'd heard of and thought that surely if this artwork was being offered it would be sold either at private auction or by Sotheby's at some big publicized event where it would be known that original pieces by these artists were available.

So then I typed in to my laptop "Park West auction scam" or "Park West auction fraud" in Google to see what would come up, and that's when I found information about a variety of lawsuits, class action lawsuits and web pages dedicated to the anecdotal stories of people who felt they had been misled or ripped off in a variety of ways by Park West.

After it started and I listened for a while I still had a half hour while I was sitting there waiting for email to load, so I read them in some detail. I was reading about the lawsuits and the variety of business practices.

FAR:   Did you do something about your concerns?

MJ:
I didn't do anything about it at first except talk to my family about it and talk to the other couple who shared our table at dinner that night. "When I gave my mom's laptop back to her, I showed it to my dad and said, "Look I left all these web pages open about the Park West auction, I bet you'd find this interesting, it sounded a little outrageous what they were saying, here take a look." So we all talked about it that day but then after that night we didn't really think about it for a few days.

FAR:   What prompted you to print out and distribute your fact sheet about Park West?

MJ:
Three or four days later, the day before the next sea day, I saw a handout - I guess in addition to being put on their schedule Park West generally has a one page glossy leaflet about the auction happening the next day. I saw that and it got me upset. I felt that all these people who were in the same situation I was in - here on vacation having a good time - would go to this auction without knowing the stories of people who felt they had been ripped off by Park West.

I was concerned that fellow vacationers were going to go to this auction the next day and potentially think they were investing money in valuable art work and then find out later on, whether it be a week or month or whether their heirs found out 30 or 40 years later, that actually they'd purchased artwork that had quite little value. That got me very upset.

So I came up with an idea of just informing them, telling them that there are risks involved and that everything that you hear might not be true.

I went back to the café and downloaded a lot of the websites, and I tried to be very clear that I was not an expert, that I didn't know the veracity of either what the auctioneer was saying or what the websites were saying. I thought it was reasonable to assume that these lawsuits existed and that people felt that they had been defrauded by Park West and that's what I wanted to convey in the fact sheet - not that I knew this to be the case but that potential buyers should be cautious because the lawsuits exist and people have felt like they had been defrauded in the past. I phrased the fact sheet in that way and made sure that I put into quotation marks anything that was directly from these websites and I was clear about the sources just so that no one felt I was trying to make any strong, outrageous claims of my own because that was what I was upset with - that this was what was being done to these people - and I didn't want to do the same thing in trying to convey this information.

Following is the fact sheet that Mark Jacobs prepared for distribution to Park West Gallery auction goers. He printed 50 copies to hand out:

MJ:
I wanted to make it as unobtrusive as possible so I put the fact sheets in five stacks of ten and just before the auction started I went to the first person in each row and said, "Here is some information about the auction, please pass it down." And in about 20 seconds I had said that to five people and that was the entire effort that I made.

It was the time in between when people started registering but before they started actually selling at the auction.

FAR:   Did anyone object to your passing them out?

MJ:
Nobody objected to my passing them out.

FAR:   What followed?

MJ:
I went back to my room and changed to go to the next activity which I thought was going to be volleyball, and on my way back I walked through the auction area and heard the auctioneer saying, "The information that you guys have in the sheet [he held up the sheet I had passed out] is presented by somebody who obviously has a grudge against Park West Gallery and is trying to get something from us and don't worry, he'll be off the boat by tomorrow." I was a little concerned but figured he was just making claims again.

I went and spent some time doing activities with my wife and kids and a couple of hours later I heard my name over the loudspeaker, saying that I should go to guest relations. They brought me up to the sixth floor of the ship into an office with the Hotel Director and the Staff Captain where they interviewed me about this.

I made my position very clear: "Look, I'm an American citizen, I haven't done anything wrong, I don't have to answer any of your questions."

They asked me how I felt about the fact sheet and why I would come onto the ship and spoil people's vacations and said that they had two people who would identify me as having handed out these sheets. Did I know that they had hundreds of video cameras all over the ship. I repeated the same thing. "I haven't done anything wrong, I'm not going to talk to you."

The Staff Captain left and came back in a few minutes saying he had consulted with the Captain and they were going to leave me in Norway the next day.

They didn't indicate that the two passengers who would identify me were at all upset that I had done this or that anyone else was. They did state, "If you do something against one of our vendors it's against the rules."

I asked, "What rules? What rule was broken?"

They said, "We've got our guest conduct policy."

I said yes, I'd seen the guest conduct policy and I'd read it and I didn't see anything in there that handing out information unobtrusively was in any way against the policy.

They said, "It's in your stateroom, go back and read the policy, you're going to be off the ship."

They wouldn't answer any questions as to how specifically the handing out of information was against the rules.

I didn’t see any rule that applied, which doesn't mean that there isn't a rule somewhere because when you print out your boarding information before you get to the cruise ship you have to check a check-off box which has 10 pages of small print. I don't know what's in there. It might say things like, "The Captain always has the right to kick people off the ship at his sole discretion." I don't think there's anything specific about what I did.

FAR:   I guess you have already described the eviction process...

MJ:
I told them in that meeting that I would be talking to a lawyer and that my lawyer would be in touch with them, and I did speak to a lawyer who reached out to Royal Caribbean and spoke to someone in the corporate offices and said, "You can't do this, you're not entitled to kick him off the ship," and they said, "We're going to do it anyway."

The lawyer found out that Royal Caribbean is incorporated in the Bahamas, not in the United States which makes them less liable to American law.

The other thought I had that night... I was talking to a friend who has worked on some First Amendment issues in New York. He said, "Should I tell the local newspaper about this?" I thought, "I guess, now that it looks like they're going to kick me off the ship, that's a good idea. Why don't you line up a reporter or two to see?"

The next day, which was the day they were planning to kick me off the ship, I tried to meet with the Captain. I wrote him a short letter, which I put in an envelope and then sealed and signed across it and gave it to Guest Relations and asked them to give it to the Captain.

The letter follows:

She got back to me 10 minutes later and said, "He's completely in agreement with your being removed from the ship. The issue is resolved. He's not going to meet with you." I told the woman in guest services that I wanted to meet with the Staff Captain again, and she got back to me 10 minutes later and said, "He's not going to meet with you."

I said, "Well then I'll sit down and meet with you and give you my new information."

She said fine, so my wife and I sat down with this guest services person and went over the three pieces of new information. One was that my lawyer had been in touch with Royal Caribbean and as far I understood was instructing them that they had to cease and desist, they weren't allowed to send me off the ship, they had no entitlement to do that. Second that I had been in touch with the US embassy, which I had the night before - I had spoken with the State Department in the USA and they had referred me to the US embassy in Oslo and I'd spoken to a Mr. Hall there and they had refused to get directly involved, saying that it was a company affair and there was no clarity that anything against my rights was being done but that in the process of them putting me off the ship, if the Oslo authorities take me away or I was involved with somebody other than security on the ship, that I could get back in touch with them. Also that Mr. Hall was a little unclear as to how their security would be able to take me off the ship since they had authority in international waters but shouldn't have authority when you're within the port of a municipality. I conveyed this information to the guest services woman and she said they wouldn't take me off the ship, the Oslo authorities would do so.

The third piece of information I told her was, "If you put me off the ship this is going to be a news story and I've already been in touch with a number of reporters, which I had at that point, and this is no story if you threaten to throw me off the ship but this is absolutely a news story if you do and it's not wise for you to remove me." This time we left and it took them almost an hour to evaluate all that information but they came back and said, "We're still removing you from the ship."

The rest you have.

[At 3:30pm Oslo time on July 26, ship security requested that Mr. Jacobs voluntarily leave the ship. He refused. Oslo police were brought onto the ship and they informed Mr. Jacobs that, regardless of what actually happened on the ship, the police would remove him from the ship at the request of the captain. Mr. Jacobs was escorted off the ship by Oslo police. The rest of his family stayed on board. He was forced to make his way to England at his own expense to rejoin his family for their flight back to the USA. Following the beaching of Mark Jacobs, his wife, Elena Pousada, attended further Park West auctions on the cruise ship and took extensive notes of what happened.]

FAR:   Have you had any contact with Royal Caribbean or Park West after you left the ship in Oslo?

MJ:  No.

FAR:   What are your plans?

MJ:
I'm in conversation with a number of lawyers, considering what sort of legal remedies I might have and seeing if I might become involved with one of his ongoing lawsuits or a different one.

It certainly would be nice to recover the money that I lost. But more to the point it would be nice for people to know that Royal Caribbean is supporting these very questionable claims and practices by Park West and that people who are going on these cruise ships thinking they’re spending a couple of thousand for the ship itself then may end up in something much more expensive, thinking that they're making investments and in the end losing a great deal of their money.

Fine Art Registry will follow the story of Mark Jacobs beaching by Royal Caribbean and report on developments.

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