The High Court has declined Ryanair’s request to manage three screen-scraping actions together, while ordering formal case management in its case against SC Vola SRL and Ypsilon.net AG.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 3 March 2022, Mr Justice Allen said the proposed approach risked linking cases involving defendants who said they operated different businesses and faced different competition issues. He was not persuaded there was commonality in the competition claims and said joint management might save Ryanair costs while adding to defendants’ costs.
The motions sought directions for the conduct of the cases and proposed that their case management take place alongside one another. Ryanair said it was not seeking consolidation. The defendants opposed the applications, arguing that linking the actions could delay their own cases and require them to monitor developments in other litigation.
The three actions concern allegations about harvesting or using information from Ryanair’s website. The judgment addressed case management only; it did not decide the underlying allegations.
One motion, in the case against Flightbox sp. z.o.o., was adjourned at Ryanair’s request because it could not prove service of the motion papers. Flightbox had not entered an appearance. The judge said the appropriate order was to strike out that motion rather than adjourn it. Any later application in the action could be considered on the issues it raised, he said.
In the action against On the Beach Limited, a motion to dismiss for delay was listed for hearing on 8 March 2022. Mr Justice Allen said there was no point in case managing the action before that motion was decided. If the action survived, he said, a focused case-management application could set a proposed course and timetable.
The judge made a case-management order under Order 63C, rule 6 for the Vola and Ypsilon action, which had already been subject to earlier directions by another judge. He said further case management could address the orderly progress of the proceedings, but declined to assign a judge to oversee the case from that point through to its conclusion.
The judgment set out proposed steps: Ryanair was to respond within three weeks to Vola’s request for discovery relating to the second trial module; Ypsilon was to provide a draft proposed amended defence and counterclaim within five weeks; and Vola and Ypsilon were each to reply within three weeks to Ryanair’s proposal about exchanging witness statements and expert reports. The judge stressed that he was not directing that Ryanair’s proposed timetable had to be adopted. If the defendants disagreed, they should explain why and make any alternative proposal.
A case-management conference was also to be fixed. The judgment did not determine whether Ypsilon would be allowed to add a counterclaim or what discovery would be required for the second module.