Schettino, who is under house arrest, deviated from the ship’s charted course to bring the Concordia closer to the tiny island of Giglio, gashing the hull on a reef a few hundred meters offshore. He has said the reef wasn’t on his nautical charts.

While Costa said the settlement proposal was the result of negotiations with consumer associations, several attorneys said they would not advise passengers to accept it.

“Woefully inadequate,” said Jack Hickey, a Miami-based personal injury attorney who specializes in maritime law.

Hickey is representing a family of four who survived the wreck and said he is seeking a settlement that is “many, many multiples more” than the Costa proposal.

Experts say a fair amount for uninjured survivors would be much higher than the offer.

Miami maritime lawyer Charles Lipcon said that based on his decades of experience, a fair settlement for someone without an attorney would be $60,000 plus the cost of the trip and therapy.

Paul Hedlund, a Los Angeles attorney specializing in mass disasters, said he believes the minimum value should be $100,000 based on cases he’s worked on, though that would likely include attorney’s fees that can amount to as much as a third of an award.

Even though Carnival Corp., which owns Costa, is based in Miami, passengers who want to file suit in U.S. courts will likely face challenges. That’s because fine print on tickets purchased and signed by the 3,000-plus passengers before the ship capsized includes a “choice of forum” clause stating that lawsuits must be filed in Italy.

Maritime law experts say that similar attempts to sue in the U.S. despite these clauses have been turned away by the Supreme Court and that the expense of filing a lawsuit in a foreign court has deterred many plaintiffs in the past.

Bob Jarvis, who teaches maritime law at Nova Southeastern University, said he believes Costa will try other ways to avoid legal action.

“Of course they’ll try to scare people by saying, ‘Look, it’s going to be years of litigation,’ and it probably will be. And they’ll also try to scare people by saying, ‘The lawyers are going to take a large share of whatever recovery there is.’ That’s also true,” he said. “But plaintiffs would do much better to reject this offer. It’s obviously an opening proposal by Costa and that number is going to go up over time.”

Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed to this report, which was supplemented with information from The Associated Press.