The High Court has allowed Aileen Sheridan to amend her personal injuries summons against Ryanair DAC to plead that her claim is brought under the Montreal Convention.
Mr Justice Max Barrett ruled on an application under Order 28, rule 1 of the Rules of the Superior Courts. He said the amendment would put the real issue between the parties before the court. He did not decide whether Ryanair was liable for the injury alleged, and reserved the question of the application’s costs for hearing from the parties.
Ms Sheridan claims she tripped on a metal lip or similar feature while disembarking an aircraft in Majorca in August 2019 and suffered personal injuries. The summons was issued on 6 August 2021. The judgment records that the Montreal Convention had been mentioned in correspondence before the summons issued, but was omitted from it through inadvertence by Ms Sheridan’s legal team.
Ryanair opposed the amendment. Its position was that the Convention provides the exclusive cause of action for the claim and imposes a two-year limitation period. It argued that the summons had not properly pleaded the Convention and that the claim could not proceed after the limitation period expired.
The judge considered whether allowing the amendment would improperly deprive Ryanair of a limitation defence. He distinguished the case from earlier examples where amendments introduced fresh claims or facts after time had expired. Here, he said, the summons was issued within the two-year period, the proposed Convention-based claim arose from facts already pleaded, and no new facts were being added.
The judgment noted that the Convention’s Article 35 leaves the method of calculating the two-year period to the law of the court hearing the case. Applying Irish authority on amendments to pleadings, the judge accepted the plaintiff solicitor’s evidence that Ryanair had been alerted to the intended basis of the claim and would suffer no prejudice.
The court therefore allowed the amendments sought. The underlying injury claim remains to be determined.