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Tourism and Sports

Special Interest Group

While tourism continues to grow, the problems faced by injured tourists and the lawyers seeking redress for them do not diminish. The Tourism SIG aims to help exchange information and knowhow to assist lawyers acting in sports, tourism and travel claims.

The Sports and Tourism SIG holds a bi-annual conference and its members regularly exchange information about International Travel claims and current updates in EU cross-border litigation with likeminded Lawyers. This is an excellent group for networking with fellow travel lawyers and for cooperating on cross-border cases.

In all cross-border cases, co-operation with lawyers from other jurisdictions is essential and building up relationships can make a huge difference to the outcome of such cases.

Philip Banks is Chair of PEOPIL’s Sports and Tourism Special Interest Group and is a Partner in the UK Law firm Irwin Mitchell.

Philip heads up a team in their UK International Travel Litigation Group. He acts for clients who have been injured in accidents while they are travelling or working abroad, or for foreign nationals who have accidents in the UK. Many of the clients who Philip represents have sustained serious, and in some cases, life-changing injuries in all kinds of accidents including coach crashes, accidents in hotels and accidents at work.

If you would like to be a part of this group, if you are keen to develop the group further or require further information please contact admin@peopil.com for more information.

EC Regulations

Case law

90/314/EEC- The Package Travel Directive

Regulation 90/314/EEC introduced a regime for regulating rights and duties relating to Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours. Member states have implemented the regulations and in some members states their effect has been profound.

The PEOPIL Tourism EEG is keen to gather the implementing legislation used in the various states which can then be used not only as a data base for PEOPIL members but also to consider comparative law issues in this field. PEOPIL members are invited to forward to Wolfgang Resch a copy of the legislation implementing directive 90/314/EEC in their jurisdiction.

Likewise, if there are any Court decisions in relation to Regulation 90/314 that may be of interest to members of the Tourism EEG please forward details to Wolfgang Resch.

Key issues which are of interest to members of the Tourism EEG include how the courts interpret:

  • The meaning of a “Package” – in particular the meaning of “pre arranged” and “inclusive price” (see regulation …)
  • The effect of regulation 15(2) Does this create strict liability subject to the statutory defences? If not how does the liability regime function?
  • The application of international or other standards in assessing whether there has been a breach of the regulations?
  • Some of the most important cases from the European Court and English Court are available if you click on the following links.

European Court - Key cases

Maritime Claims

Personal injury claims arising from International Carriage by Sea are largely governed by the Athens Convention and related legislation. If any anybody has any materials which they think may be of interest to members of the Travel and Tourism EEG in relation to maritime claims please provide details to Clive Garner at clive.garner@irwinmitchell.com

Materials which may be of interest:

Athens Convention and related protocols
Other conventions
Anticipated reforms

The international Conference on the revision of the Athens Convention took place in London in 2002. The agreed revisions in the form of the 2002 Protocol are not yet in force and will not come into force until 12 months after such time as 10 State Parties signify their acceptance. Amongst other things, any revisions are likely to increase the personal injury damages limitations.

Skiing and Leisure pursuit claims

The conduct of skiers is governed by the rules of the International Ski Federation and a link to the rules can be found below:

https://www.fis-ski.com/uk/rulesandpublications/fisgeneralrules/10fisrules.html

If you would like to be a part of this group, if you are keen to develop the group further or require further information please contact admin@peopil.com for more information.