The High Court ordered Ryanair to make a set of documents available to Channel 4 without redactions, while requiring the names of personnel mentioned in them to remain redacted. The order arose from discovery disputes in Ryanair’s defamation action over a 2013 Channel 4 programme about aviation safety.
The programme, “Secrets from the Cockpit”, included allegations about fuel policy, cockpit voice recordings and pilot employment conditions. Ryanair sued Channel 4 Television Corporation and Blakeway Productions Limited for defamation. The defendants pleaded, among other things, that there were reasonable grounds to investigate whether Ryanair practices and policies affected passenger safety, and raised defences under the Defamation Act 2009. The judgment addressed discovery applications, not whether the programme’s allegations were true or defamatory.
Channel 4 made two relevant motions. On its “adequacy” motion, it argued that Ryanair’s discovery was deficient and sought further and better discovery or an independent expert to oversee the process. Ryanair had initially discovered about 7,500 documents from a pool of more than 20,000, then produced about 1,000 more after Channel 4 raised queries. Ryanair’s discovery representative acknowledged errors, including overlooking minutes from a Seville local air safety group, and apologised.
Justice Meenan refused the adequacy motion. He accepted that mistakes had occurred but found them understandable given the volume of documents and the steps taken to address the issues. He was not satisfied that further and better discovery was necessary, or that an independent expert should be appointed.
The separate “redactions” motion concerned documents Ryanair had redacted or de-identified, relying on Irish and EU aviation confidentiality rules. Channel 4 sought inspection of the documents in unredacted form. The judge considered the balance between their relevance to a fair trial and the possible effect of disclosure on future safety investigations. He concluded that the balance favoured disclosure, finding no evidence that disclosure had caused a chilling effect or that it would seriously undermine future reporting.
The court ordered Ryanair to make available for Channel 4’s inspection, without redactions, documents listed in the first schedule, first part of the discovery affidavits sworn on 3 November 2015 and 30 November 2016. The order preserved redactions of names of people who made reports or were named in them. The court accepted the existing redactions protecting pilots’ identities in fuel-policy documents. It also granted liberty to apply over documents withheld on grounds of commercial sensitivity. The judgment separately noted that Channel 4’s motion for discovery from the Irish Aviation Authority was dealt with in another judgment.