Hilarious illustration found in Laddie, Prescott and Vitoria: The Modern law of Copyright and Designs (3rd ed, 2000):
The Republic of Italy was sued by the Commission for failing to furnish road transport statistics as required by a Directive. The excuse was that the data had been held on a computer at its Ministry of Transport which, unfortunately, had been destroyed by a bomb. The Commission riposted that this ‘did not correspond to reality’ since previous excuses proffered by the Italian government (after the date of the bomb) had included ‘lack of staff’ and ‘the overloading of the computer centre’.
Held, although the bomb attack might have constituted a case of force majeure, its effect could only have lasted a certain time, during which the data might have been collected and compiled afresh, and could not justify a continued failure to supply it after four and a half years.
(Case 101/84 EC Commission v Italy [1986] 2 CMLR 352, ECJ)
Hahahahahhahaa!
