The Supreme Court has overturned a summary judgment requiring Ryanair to pay Aer Rianta £433,740 in disputed landing and passenger charges and has sent the case back to the High Court for a full hearing.
The dispute concerned charges for Ryanair services on the Dublin-Paris and Dublin-Brussels routes during 1997 and 1998. Aer Rianta operated a traffic growth incentive scheme under which airlines could receive substantial discounts on airport charges when they generated additional passenger traffic.
Aer Rianta claimed Ryanair owed £356,777, plus £76,963 interest. In December 2000, the High Court granted summary judgment for the full £433,740 after finding that Ryanair had not shown a fair or reasonable probability of having a real defence.
Ryanair appealed. Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, claimed that discussions with Aer Rianta executive Brian J. Byrne had resulted either in oral variations to the published discount scheme or in a separate agreement giving Ryanair additional benefits. Ryanair also argued that Aer Rianta was prevented, by representations made to it, from enforcing the charges as claimed.
Aer Rianta denied that any such variation had been agreed. It argued that any departure from the published scheme would have required board approval and criticised Ryanair’s evidence as vague, particularly because no precise date, place or detailed terms of the alleged agreement had been identified.
Mrs Justice McGuinness held that those weaknesses did not justify deciding the factual dispute without a trial. The test at summary judgment stage was not whether Ryanair’s account was likely to be true, but whether it was so implausible or internally contradictory that no real or bona fide defence could exist.
The court found that possibility remained open on the affidavit evidence. The conflicts between the parties therefore required oral evidence and fuller examination at a plenary hearing.
The appeal was allowed and the proceedings were remitted to the High Court for trial.