The plaintiffs took a Caribbean cruise on the Rhapsody of the Seas owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd (Royal Caribbean). After disembarking from the ship en route to a tour bus, a railing that had been removed by the defendant Robert Lynch Trucking Ltd (a provisioner of the vessel) and propped up on the dock (owned by West Indian Co Ltd) fell on Mrs Sharpe and caused her injuries. She sued for her injuries and her husband sued for loss of consortium, more than a year after the incident. The Royal Caribbean ticket/contract of passage included a one-year time-bar provision, and Royal Caribbean on its own and on behalf of West Indian Co Ltd and Robert Lynch Trucking Ltd moved for summary judgment on the time-bar issue. The plaintiffs countered that the time-bar provision was ambiguous regarding its application to on-shore incidents. Specifically, the plaintiffs argued that Mrs Sharpe was no longer a 'passenger' under the ticket provision once she had disembarked onto the dock.

Held: The definition of 'passenger' and 'carrier' in the ticket unambiguously covered the Sharpes and Royal Carribbean, regardless of the location of any alleged incident. The Court noted that the definition could have been narrowed/limited in the way that the plaintiffs argued, and in support cited the definitions in the Passengers Convention 1961 of 'passenger' as 'a person carried in a ship under contract of carriage', and of 'carriage' as the 'the period while a passenger is on board the ship, and in the course of embarking or disembarking; but does not include any period while the passenger is in a marine station or on a quay or other port installation'. However, because the ticket/contract of passage was broadly and unambiguously drafted, the time-bar was valid and applied to bar the plaintiffs' claims against Royal Caribbean.

The Court, however, denied summary judgment in respect of West Indian Co Ltd and Robert Lynch Trucking Ltd because the terms of the ticket/contract of passage purporting to extend the time bar to 'third parties' were too ambiguous to definitively extend to them.