Prince Harry’s North Pole information in courtroom battle with billionaire over tragic Titan journey | EUROtoday

A British explorer who guided Prince Harry to the North Pole is locked in a £1m courtroom combat with a billionaire heiress over a cancelled expedition to the wreck of The Titanic on the ill-fated Titan submersible.

Henry Cookson, a former safari information and polar explorer, now runs Cookson’s Adventures, an ultra-luxury journey journey firm specialising in bespoke journeys for prime net-worth people to far off and in any other case inaccessible spots, typically costing hundreds of thousands.

In 2017, his firm was paid £680,000 by Karen Lo, the super-rich heiress to a Hong Kong soy milk fortune, to organise a once-in-a-lifetime submarine go to to the Titanic, deliberate for 2018 aboard the OceanGate Titan craft.

But the 2018 dive was canceled after the vessel was broken by lightning, with Ms Lo being supplied a precedence place on a future journey as a substitute.

However she by no means acquired her journey after Covid intervened and the Titan vessel then infamously imploded throughout a dive to the wreck in June 2023, killing all 5 passengers, together with OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, and inflicting the corporate’s operations to stop.

Ms Lo is now suing Holland Park-based Henry Cookson Adventures Ltd, claiming the corporate is chargeable for refunding her for the Titanic journey she paid for however by no means took.

But Mr Cookson’s firm is combating the declare, saying the heiress knew there have been no refunds when she put her cash down for the Titanic journey, and that she had an opportunity to go on the expedition later however by no means did.

Ms Lo is a Hong Kong primarily based heiress with a reported web price of $1 billion. Her wealth comes from Vitasoy, a soymilk and drinks firm based by her grandfather Dr Lo Kwee-seong, which has a reported international turnover of $1 billion and over 7,000 workers.

She hit the headlines in 2018 when she purchased Sting’s New York residence for $50m and once more in 2023 when she sued a gallery proprietor for £500,000 over alleged non-delivery of a Banksy portray she had purchased.

On his firm’s web site, Mr Cookson describes how he used his expertise guiding horseback safaris in Kenya and in polar exploration, together with a mission to the Pole with Prince Harry and the Walking With The Wounded charity, to arrange extremely high-end journey journey firm Cookson’s Adventures.

“It’s these expeditions that served as inspiration in founding Cookson Adventures, bringing the same standards of ground-breaking excellence to the world of private travel. That’s whether working with remote tribes in Africa or organising Alaska’s most complex charter operations,” the web site states.

Papers lodged with London’s High courtroom describe how Mr Cookson had beforehand been “on friendly personal terms” with Ms Lo, even attending her marriage ceremony, and had organised journeys price “tens of millions of US dollars” for her and her friends.

Her barrister Jack Harding states in courtroom papers: “The defendant agreed to organise and supply a two-week expedition for the claimant and 17 others to visit the wreck of the Titanic between 30th June and 14th July 2018.

“The defendant’s provider for the expedition was OceanGate, an organization which, on the materials time, specialised within the provision of crewed submersibles for tourism, analysis and exploration.”

Having paid around £670,000 up front for the trip in May 2018, an email was sent by Cookson Adventure to Ms Lo explaining that the mission had been cancelled because the Titan craft had been struck by lightning and its electronic systems damaged.

The contract “offered ‘clients’ with 100% credit score towards 2019 Titanic dives or every other expedition supplied by OceanGate” due to the cancellation, but “OceanGate didn’t perform any additional dives to the Titanic wreck in 2019 or 2020,” he said.

“The claimant, by way of her brokers and authorized representatives, subsequently requested reimbursement of the sums paid underneath the contract. The defendant has refused to refund any of the claimant’s cash.”

Ms Lo is suing under the Package Travel Regulations 1992, arguing it was an express or implied term of the contract that the dive would take place within a “affordable time.”

“In repudiatory breach of the aforementioned categorical and/or implied phrases, the Titanic Expedition didn’t happen in 2018 or in any respect,” he says.

“As a results of the defendant’s breach of contract, the claimant was entitled to and did elect to deal with the contract as at an finish.

“As a result of the matters set out above, the claimant seeks damages for her wasted expenditure in entering into a contract which was never performed.

“The defendant was enriched, on the expense of the claimant, by the cost and receipt of her cash. It is irrelevant that the defendant could have subsequently handed some or all the cash to its personal provider.

“The claimant did not receive any benefit from the money that she paid to the claimant and/or the defendant did not provide any service of benefit to the claimant.”

Ms Lo’s lawyer says she desires her £670,000 again, plus curiosity at 8% from May 2018, taking the full claimed over £1m.

However within the defence to the motion, Henk Soede, for Mr Cookson’s firm, denies they owe the heiress a penny.

“She was introduced to Mr Cookson through a personal friend in 2011-12 and has been using the defendant’s services since then, in every case for exclusive unique and tailor-made trips at very high cost,” he says.

“For example, in 2018/19, after the postponed dive voyage to which this claim relates, the defendant arranged and the claimant paid in full for a multi-million dollar trip to the Antarctic on three yachts, including the super-yacht purchased in the name of the claimant the year previously, with twin helicopters and two submersibles, for a total of 13 guests and four nannies.

“The claimant’s annual funds with the defendant bumped into tens of missions of US {dollars}.

“The claimant and Mr Cookson were on friendly personal terms and Mr Cookson had attended her wedding in Rome and accompanied a number of her friends who traveled with the couple to Egypt as part of their honeymoon.

“At no stage did the defendant conform to ‘organise and provide’ an expedition for the claimant and her friends to go to the wreck of The Titanic,” the lawyer states, insisting that Mr Cookson’s company instead had an “affiliate settlement” to be a booking agent for some of the planned trips, with OceanGate remaining the “organiser”.

The contract had also contained a no-refund clause, with the agreement being that a credit towards a future voyage with priority booking rights be provided instead if the mission did not go ahead for technical reasons.

“The defendant disputes this declare as a result of, in define, the Package Travel Regulations 1992 don’t apply as a result of the vacation was neither offered nor supplied to be offered within the UK,” he says.

“Alternatively, even when the laws did apply, the claimant wouldn’t be entitled to a refund because the package deal was not cancelled however solely postponed, in accordance with the agreed phrases.

“Nor in any event would the defendant be liable to refund monies paid to it, which, as the claimant was well aware, had been passed on to the party providing the voyage, which was also, if the regulations applied, the organiser.

“The claimant didn’t take up the credit score inside an affordable time and thereby waived or misplaced her entitlement. Further, by notifying the defendant that she didn’t intend on utilizing the credit score sooner or later, the claimant terminated the contract and/or cancelled the voyage.

“Alternatively, the contract was in any event frustrated as a result of the complete loss of the dive vessel in 2023 and the resulting cessation of the provider’s trading activities.”

The lawyer states that while no dives befell in 2019 and Covid restrictions stopped any missions in 2020, dives befell in 2021 and 2022 which Ms Lo might have joined utilizing her credit score, previous to the ill-fated closing mission in 2023.

“At all material times, OceanGate acknowledged that the defendant was entitled to a credit for un-taken 2018 missions,” he says.

“However, the claimant made clear that she did not want to use her credit in 2019 or at any time in the future.”

Her solicitors had as a substitute demanded a refund in June 2019, he mentioned.

The case, except settled, will come earlier than a decide in courtroom at a later date.

The Titan submersible was the primary privately-owned submersible with a claimed most depth of 4,000 metres and the primary accomplished crewed submersible with a hull constructed of titanium and carbon fiber composite supplies.

After testing with dives to its most supposed depth in 2018 and 2019, the unique composite hull of Titan developed fatigue harm and was changed by 2021.

In that yr, OceanGate started transporting paying clients to the wreck of the Titanic, finishing a number of dives to the wreck website in 2021 and 2022.

During the submersible’s first 2023 expedition, it imploded throughout the crew’s descent to the wreckage of Titanic, about 320 nautical miles (590 km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland.

The submersible was carrying vacationers Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman Dawood, crew member and Titanic professional Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and the vessel’s pilot, Stockton Rush.