The Solicitors' Journal and Reporter – February 14, 1914

It is not infrequently the case that points which were argued at great length in a court of first instance, and which at first seem to raise great difficulties, get straightened out into a very simple shape by the time three judges in the Court of Appeal have combined their intellectual forces in an endeavour to elucidate them.

This has just happened in Oceanic Steamship Co. v. Ryan and Others (Times, 10th inst.), better known as the Titanic Ticket case. The facts of the four cases, tried together for reasons of convenience, are simple enough. The dependants of four steerage passengers who went down in the ill-fated Titanic sued the steamship company under Lord Campbell’s Act to recover damages for negligent navigation causing their relatives’ death.

The jury found negligence, but the company pleaded that liability was excluded owing to an exemption clause attached by them as a condition on the back of the passengers’ tickets, but referred to by a “Notice to Passengers” printed on the face thereof. The jury found that in three cases the notice so printed was insufficient to draw the passengers’ attention to the condition, but that in the fourth case it was sufficient. As regards that fourth case, however, the point remained whether the condition was legally valid and binding on the passenger.

Now, in the court below, questions of negligence and reasonableness of notice were argued at great length; but the decision of the majority in the Court of Appeal rendered all this argument unnecessary. They held, affirming the judgment of Mr. Justice Bailhache below, that the exemption clause was invalid, inasmuch as it was not legally permissible under the provision of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1824, s. 320. That section compels shipowners to furnish steerage passengers with a statutory ticket in a statutory form approved by the Board of Trade, and adds that “any directions contained in that form of contract ticket not inconsistent with this Act shall be obeyed as if set forth in this section.”

Now the shipowners claimed that a “Notice to Passengers” drawing their attention to the condition on the back of the ticket, exempting the company from liability for negligence, was a “direction” contained in the ticket, and not inconsistent with the Act. At least, that in substance was the argument on their behalf, although wrapped up in much ingenious learning based on analogy and reference to prior legislation.

It needs only to be stated in this bold way for its inherent unsoundness to be at once apparent. In the words of Lord Justice Vaughan Williams, the statute must be held to impose on shipowners an implied condition to carry steerage passengers with reasonable care, and provision to the contrary is inconsistent with this implied condition. Consequently the exemption clause was invalid.