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Costa Offers $14.5K Per Passenger On Concordia Disaster

ROME (CBSMiami/AP) – Uninjured passengers from the Costa Concordia disaster are being offered about $14.5-thousand a piece.

Costa Crociere SpA is offering the money to compensate them for their lost baggage and psychological trauma after its cruise ship ran aground and capsized off Tuscany Jan. 13th when the captain deviated from his route.

Costa, a unit of the world's biggest cruise operator, the Miami-based Carnival Corp., will also reimburse passengers the full costs of their cruise, travel expenses and any medical expenses sustained after the grounding.

The agreement was announced Friday after a day of negotiations between Costa representatives and Italian consumer groups representing 3,206 people from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the Costa Concordia hit a reef on Jan. 13.

The deal does not apply to the hundreds of ship crew members, the roughly 100 cases of people injured or the families who lost loved ones.

Passengers and crew are free to pursue legal action if they aren't satisfied with the deal.

The ship's captain remains under house arrest, facing accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all passengers were evacuated.

Some consumer groups have already signed on as injured parties in the criminal case against the Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino.

In addition, Codacons, one of Italy's best known consumer groups, has engaged two U.S. law firms to launch a class-action lawsuit against Costa and Carnival in Miami, claiming that it expects to get anywhere from $164-thousand to $1.3 million per passenger.

Sixteen bodies have been recovered and another 16 people remain unaccounted for and presumed dead.

(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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