"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...

Her incident neither sets a precedent, nor demonstrates what the rule for
"mere mortals" is.

Obviously no precident is set as no court case occured to make one.
However traveling without a ticket is well reviewed in courts.

It depends on whether travelling without a ticket is a civil or criminal
offence.
If it is civil then a contract has to be shown to exist between the rail
company and the traveller. Contracts are two sided affairs and do not exist
merely because one party
says it does. Clearly a passanger has by action shown an intent to enter
into some contract, which may be to travel from Waterloo Directly to Bristol
Parkway.
So the passenger has offerd to enter into a contract with the company by
entering the train. The representative of the company (conductor) may accept
this offer to treat by selling a ticket. The conductor may decline, as no
contract yet exists he is free to decline, he may do so for many or in fact
any reason other than those proscibed by law such as a racial decision. One
of the reasons to decline is that the train being the Waterloo to Exeter
train he cannot comply with the single train trip to Bristol that the other
party wishes, so no contract has been agreed. At this point the customer
should vacate the train. If he is prevented from doing so by the action of
the rail company (i.e. the train has now left Waterloo)
that is not a contractual issue.

A similar example is say you get in a Taxi and the driver moves off, you say
where you want to go and the driver says, North Side Taxis dont go Sounth of
the river I'll take you back to the Taxi Rank and you can get a All London
Taxi mate. Would you pay their standard £10 minimum hire charge?


As you mentioned precident,

I doubt you will find that any rail company has taked a passenger to court
over boarding the wrong train. Many passengers may well have paid up, but
that is back to mugging.