Legal Quiz

Storyline one:

Lullaby Holidays sells exotic package holidays. The operator specialises in selling to the more remote parts of the Caribbean.

The holidays are described in the operator’s brochure as being restful and luxurious.

They are designed for those people who wish to simply relax and enjoy being pampered in beautiful beach surroundings.

Jack and Gill have had an extremely stressful year due to family problems, a car accident and starting up their own e-commerce business in the previous year.

Feeling tired and worn out, Jack and Gill consequently book a two-week holiday with Lullaby Holidays starting January 14, 2000.

They want to be able to relax and enjoy their holiday in the beautiful surroundings that the brochure talked about.

Unfortunately, during the first week of their holiday, noisy building works ruin their peaceful relaxation on the beach.

The couple are told this intrusion is apparently necessary in order to rectify a sudden and unanticipated fault with the water system on the island.

During the second week, Jack becomes ill and experiences sickness and lethargy.

He is completely unable to enjoy the rest of his holiday in the Caribbean.

Jack claims that he has contracted food poisoning as a result of a meal eaten at the restaurant in the hotel in which he is staying.

However, he did not eat at the hotel during the day and there are suggestions he ate outside of the hotel compound, that he over indulged with alcohol and spent too much time laying out in the sun around midday.

Question one: no, provided that the work was genuinely unexpected.

Question two: this depends on whether food eaten at the hotel caused the food poisoning and, if so, whether it can be said to be a ‘fault’ on the part of the hotel in supplying the relevant food.

Question three: Jack will have to provide initial indications that it was food at the hotel which caused the food poisoning but thereafter the burden of proof rests with Lullaby Holidays if it is going to defend the claim successfully.

Happening Tours sells short-haul package holidays.

It has decided to embrace new technologies and set up an Internet site to sell its holidays to a wider audience over the Web.

The operator intends to describe its holidays on the Internet site, confining all descriptive material to the site, but to process payment by telephone using credit cards or by post by using cheques with confirmation invoices being posted.

Happening Tours includes that since all its descriptive material will be on its Internet site, the Package Travel Regulations and the Air Travel Organisers’ Licence Regulations in relation to brochure content will not apply and that it can also deal with booking conditions simply by sending these out with the confirmation invoice.

Question 3: Is it satisfactory to send out the booking conditions with the confirmation invoice?

Question one: although regulation five is expressed to apply to ‘a brochure’ there are arguments that Internet site material would be deemed to constitute a brochure. It is cavalier in the extreme to ignore the Package Travel Regulations in relation to Internet site material.

Question two: the position is the same as in question one, particularly since the Civil Aviation Authority has already said that it will regard Teletext as falling within the sort of descriptive material to which the ATOL Regulations will apply.

Question three: unless the booking conditions provide that a contract does not come into existence until, say, five days after receipt of the confirmation invoice, Happening Tours’ proposal will mean that the booking conditions will not apply.