Closing speeches to be heard in Ryanair case

CLOSING speeches are to begin today in a High Court defamation action by former Miss World Rosanna Davison against Ryanair.

Mr Justice Éamon de Valera sent the jury home yesterday, until today, to allow legal submissions to be made in its absence.

Evidence in the case ended on Wednesday when the jury was told lawyers for both sides would be making submissions.

As those submissions continued yesterday, the judge told the jury the prudent thing to do would be to excuse them until today, when closing speeches by each side, along with the judge’s summing up, will take place.

The action arises out of a press release published on Ryanair’s website on November 11, 2008, which Ms Davison says wrongly implied she was a racist, xenophobic and jealous.

The court heard the release was posted in reaction to remarks by Ms Davison relating to the absence of Irish female cabin crew from a Ryanair charity calendar for 2009, which featured female cabin crew in bikinis.

Ryanair denies defamation, denies the release had the meaning which alleged and pleads it was fair comment in response to a matter of public interest.

The action by Ms Davison, 27, a model and newspaper columnist with an address at Cornelscourt, Dublin, is being heard before Mr Justice de Valera and a jury.

The court has heard the release arose after an Irish Independent journalist asked Ms Davison what she thought of the absence of any Irish female cabin crew in the calendar.

She said she was correctly quoted the next day as saying: “If I was [organising] it, I would have made sure that Irish women were involved because it’s an Irish charity and Irish fundraising. Any person from any part of Europe would say that Irish women are gorgeous.”

The next day Ryanair posted the release, which said it “hit back” at comments made by Ms Davison in relation to the absence of Irish cabin crew from the calendar which “bordered on racism and demonstrated an elitist attitude against Ryanair’s international cabin crew”.