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A school that canceled a ski trip at the start of the pandemic has won a legal battle to get money back from a holiday company.
Brynmawr Foundation School staff and young people were due to travel to the US in April 2020 but canceled after the UK and Welsh governments advised against overseas school trips amid the first wave of Covid cases .
The lawsuit also heard that entry into the United States was already barred in mid-March and that Holiday World International Travel Limited even canceled accommodation before the school pulled out of the contract on March 30.
In one of the first such cases to come to court, the school won a Cardiff County Court judgment against the company, which had consistently refused to refund payment despite entry restrictions to the United States.
As Covid cases soar around the world, the school at the time told parents: ‘It is with incredible disappointment that, given the announcements from the UK and US Governments in recent days, the journey of planned skiing cannot take place.
“While we understand the situation is far beyond our control, we are devastated for the students who were so excited for this trip.”
The school sought a full refund from HWIT, operating as Leisure World Schools, but the company refused to pay, even counterclaiming sums it said were owed for cancellations and excursions.
Lawyers for Clyde & Co acting on behalf of the school argued that under package holiday consumer regulations they were entitled to a full refund within 14 days due to ‘unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances “.
Despite the U.S. travel ban, the defendant asserted that these circumstances pertained only to the “destination or its immediate vicinity”, and stated that because there remained “a silver lining”, the school had no right to terminate the contract.
The trial heard that ‘the UK and Welsh government guidelines of 12 and 13 March 2020 imposed a de facto ban on overseas school trips, and there was no realistic prospect that the so-called’ ban “be lifted in time for the trip to take place in April 2020”.
The claimant argued that the Covid outbreak was an “international phenomenon which would inevitably affect any international travel by schools”, following a declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11.
Ruling on the school, the judge, recorder Robert Craven, said the traveler had a choice whether or not to terminate, and that the occurrence of “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances” was an “objective fact”.
The reasons for the dismissal did not matter, provided “the necessary circumstances existed at the time of the dismissal”, he ruled.
After the judgment, a spokesperson for Clyde & Co said: “The judge concluded that the US entry ban announced on March 14, 2020 had (or would have had) a significant effect on the performance of the contract…this which, in isolation, would have given the school a right of termination, just like the cancellation of the accommodation by the defendant on March 14, 2020…
“As long as there were ‘unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances’ at the place of destination or in its immediate vicinity which significantly affected the performance of the package or the carriage of passengers to the destination at the time of termination, little matters that there were pre-existing circumstances at the place of departure which also significantly affected the performance of the contract, provided that they both result from the same underlying cause (in this case, the coronavirus pandemic). Covid-19).
