Elderly Couple Wins Lawsuit After Arctic Cruise Was Canceled Over the Cold
A couple in their 70s won a lawsuit against a cruise operator after they successfully argued the company was in the wrong to cancel their Arctic cruise over cold weather without returning their money.
The couple said they were suing because their cruise of a lifetime, billed as a voyage through the “Northwest Passage—in the Wake of the Great Explorers,” was hardly that.
Instead of sailing through the treacherous waters of Arctic Canada, the couple said they mostly just cruised the coast of Greenland, with some time at Baffin Island. The cruise operator, Reader Offers, offered apologies and cited abnormally cold weather and ice as the reason the trip couldn’t go on as planned but offered no compensation for the letdown.
That didn’t sit well with the intrepid Nicholas Sherman, 76, and his wife, Rosemary, 75. They took Reader Offers to court in 2018, demanding their $25,000 in ticket costs back.
It wasn’t a straightforward court victory for the Shermans, however. They initially lost their lawsuit at the U.K.’s Winchester County Court and, to add insult to injury, were ordered to pay $75,000 to cover Reader Offers’ legal fees.
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The couple appealed, however, and had better luck. A verdict ruled in their favor in the High Court last year, and that decision was confirmed by British Court of Appeal judges last week, the The Times reported.
The decision means they stand to reclaim the entire $25,000 they spent on their tickets and won’t have to pony up $75,000 to cover Reader Offers’ lawyer fees—an amount that’s sure to be enough to cover their next adventure.
In court, the couple revealed they’ve been traversing the globe in their retirement, including stops in Antarctica, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.
While they’ve touched down in nearly every corner of the earth, the couple claimed that the disappointment from their canceled cruise, which was supposed to take them throughout Arctic Canada on a weeks-long voyage, was particularly gutting because of their personal ties to the trip.
For one, they argued, Rosemary Sherman is Canadian herself, and the trip would have been an opportunity for her to see the less-visited parts of her country in all its beauty. Her husband also said it was perhaps his only opportunity to visit the Sherman Inlet in Nunavut, Canada, which is named after his forebear, Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.
After the ruling, Nicholas Sherman said the case had “nothing to do with the money” and was instead about “principle,” the Times reported. He said he hopes his court victory will protect other travelers in similar circumstances in the future.
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