SHERMAN VS READER OFFERS LTD (ROL) to tell them whether a price reduction was being offered to compensate them for the change of plans (evidently it was not). ROL had all the information it needed in order to provide this information by 7th September, which would have given Mr and Mrs Sherman (who were not due to join the party until 9th September) two days to decide what to do. - ROL did not provide this information. It did not explain the revised itinerary until the evening of 9th September [in Montreal] , only a matter of hours before the flight to Pond Inlet was due to depart. It did not at any stage tell Mr and Mrs Sherman that they were entitled to a refund. There is no reason why it could not have done so. Accordingly ROL was in breach of the obligations which it owed under Regulation 12 of the 1992 Regulations. This is to my knowledge the first case of binding authority in the UK which finds that, on the happening of a pre-departure significant change, it is not sufficient for the package organiser to tell the consumer about the change, but that they must also set out the consumer’s rights. The Regulations themselves do not specifically say this. c. Force majeure As to the force majeure defence, Lord Justice Males simply said, re the NWP:- - However, I consider that there is no question of this failure being due to unusual and unforeseeable circumstances beyond the control of ROL. While the ice conditions in the Northwest Passage were undoubtedly beyond ROL’s control, and can reasonably be regarded as unusual for the time of year in the light of the [CCJ’s] finding that the voyage described in the detailed itinerary would have been possible if ice conditions in those waters had been similar to those experienced in the preceding 10 years, it is impossible to say that those conditions were unforeseeable. Captain Snider’s report makes it clear that navigation is not always possible, and that annual patterns that were once considered reliable are now very much less reliable. It was, therefore, entirely foreseeable that it might prove impossible to perform the cruise in accordance with the detailed itinerary. - Ironically, it was the very unforeseeability of ice conditions which was itself foreseeable.
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