Decision ID: 003545

In March 2009 the 1992 Fund Executive Committee noted that in January 2009 the Court of Appeal in Rennes had rendered a judgement in respect of a claim by a tourist train operator for losses in 2000 and 2001 allegedly due to the incident. It was recalled that the 1992 Fund had accepted the losses in 2000 for a lesser amount than that claimed but had rejected the claim for losses in 2001 on the grounds of an insufficient link of causation between the alleged losses and the incident. The Committee recalled that the Commercial Court in Lorient had in a judgement rendered in September 2007 agreed with the Fund’s assessment of losses in 2000 and had rejected the claim for losses in 2001 since it had considered that there was not a sufficiently close link of causation between the losses and the contamination. The Executive Committee noted that in its judgement the Court of Appeal had stated that statistics published by official tourism bodies had shown that factors other than the Erika incident had been to blame if some businesses in the tourism sector had not recovered completely from the declined business results obtained in 1999. It was noted that the Court of Appeal had concluded that the claimant had not proved the existence of a causal link between the reduction in its business turnover and the pollution caused by the Erika incident and had for that reason rejected the claim.

Category: Pure economic loss (tourism)
Subject: Losses suffered by hotels, campsites, shops, restaurants and other tourism businesses due to a downturn in visitors