TUI lawyers celebrate court victory

Thomson Cruises has become the first in the UK to successfully defend a law suit by a group of passengers following a norovirus outbreak onboard one of its ships.

Lawyers acting for Thomson parent TUI UK said the judgment was ‘of great importance to the cruise industry’ in recognising that norovirus is not caused by the ship and that it is hard to prevent.

A total of 43 passengers joined a class action against TUI UK, 28 of whom claimed to have suffered from a gastrointestinal illness they picked up onboard the Thomson Spirit. The remainder claimed breach of contract.

Lawyers acting for the group alleged that the outbreak was bacterial and caused by negligence on the part of the cruise line and poor adherence by the crew to the ship’s established outbreak response plan.

It said that if the illness was norovirus, rather than bacterial, the ship was the source of the outbreak and the crew then failed to implement its gastrointestinal outbreak procedures.

However, Louis Cruise Lines, which operated the ship on behalf of Thomson, produced test results showing that it was a norovirus attack, rather than campylobacter as alleged.

Judge David Mitchell, sitting in the Central London County Court, found in favor of the cruise line, saying that it was a very well-controlled outbreak and that the cruise line applied and implemented its systems well and that the cruise line was not negligent.

 "This was a great example of team work between owners, charterers, external health hygiene auditors, the authorities and lawyers," said Maria Pittordis, a partner at TUI’s law firm Hill Dickinson.

She added: "The judgment is the first claim of its type to be successfully defended at trial in the UK.

"It is of great importance to the cruise industry in recognising that norovirus is not caused by the ship and that even with high levels of implementation of industry procedures, outbreaks of norovirus do occur."

The judge took into account evidence taken from the ship and also complaints from passengers about not being able to have self-service food, being given paper napkins and being confined to their cabins which, he said, demonstrated the ship’s attempts to control the virus.

He also ruled that the ship was not contaminated when the claimants boarded the ship and he said there was no duty to warn the passengers of an outbreak on the previous cruise, which affected 16 passengers, as this had been contained.

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