Davison wins defamation case against Ryanair

FORMER MISS World Rosanna Davison has been awarded €80,000 damages against Ryanair after a High Court jury found a press release posted on the airline’s website defamed her. Ms Davison claimed the release wrongly meant she was racist, elitist, xenophobic and jealous.

The press release was posted on the Ryanair.com website on November 11th, 2008, in reaction to remarks by Ms Davison relating to the absence of any Irish female cabin crew from a Ryanair charity calendar for 2009 featuring female cabin crew in bikinis.

Ryanair denied defamation and denied the release contained the alleged meanings.

The jury of eight men and four women took just under three hours to reach their majority verdict yesterday evening.

They came back with their decision about 6pm and Ms Davison smiled broadly as the verdict was outlined.

The jury were asked whether the release contained any of the following meanings: that Ms Davison was a racist, xenophobic and jealous she was not selected to be in the Ryanair calendar; that she was narrow-minded, approves of racism and bias; advocates racism and bias; had no concern for charity and in particular no concern for the Dublin Simon Community to which the proceeds of the calendar were to go. They answered: “Yes.” The jury also found the allegations were false and defamatory and assessed compensatory damages at €40,000 and aggravated damages at €40,000.

Mr Justice Eamon de Valera thanked the jury and discharged them. He adjourned the matter of costs of the five-day action and also put a stay on the award to next week. Initially, Ryanair’s director of communications Stephen McNamara, who wrote the release, said the airline intended to appeal but, in a later statement, the company said it would not pursue this course of action.

The action by Ms Davison (27), a model and newspaper columnist, with an address at Cornelscourt, Dublin, arose after Ryanair launched its 2009 charity calendar on November 10th 2008. Ms Davison was contacted by a journalist from the Irish Independent the same day and asked about the absence of any Irish female cabin crew from the calendar.

Her remarks were published on November 11th, 2008, in an article entitled “Ryanair’s Irish Girls are not keen on take off for calendar”.

She was quoted 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.”

Ryanair then posted its release, which said the comments “bordered on racism and demonstrated an elitist attitude against Ryanair’s international cabin crew”. The release, written by Mr McNamara, quoted him as saying: “There is nothing more unattractive than jealousy. We cannot believe that Ireland’s former Miss World would engage in such narrow-minded remarks about a calendar which will raise money for charity.”

In evidence, Ms Davison said she was absolutely shocked and upset when she saw the words used in the release. She felt her comments were “considered” and “very measured” and there was no intention to insult anyone.

Her solicitor Paul Tweed wrote to Ryanair looking for an apology and a donation to charity but Ryanair’s response to her solicitor’s “reasonable” letters was aggressive, “incredibly juvenile” and “downright rude”, she said.

In his evidence, Mr McNamara said he would not apologise to Ms Davison over the release and said he regarded her decision to bring proceedings as “juvenile”.

He wrote the release and posted it on the website to prevent the sales of the charity calendar being damaged and to defend the staff who participated in it, he said. Mr McNamara disagreed that Ryanair does not take criticism well or that it is a “corporate bully”.

The trial also heard Ms Davison’s father, singer Chris de Burgh, had contacted Ryanair about the release and threatened he would sue unless his daughter got an apology. De Burgh had said he had himself sued 16 times in other cases and won.

In his closing speech to the jury yesterday, Martin Hayden SC, for Ryanair, said less than 1,000 people based in Ireland viewed the press release.

This put in context what was a “storm in a teacup”, he said. Mr Hayden said Ms Davison regularly gave quotes to the media and she was very well versed in the media. She knew, in giving the quotes to the newspaper, it was going to be for a particular agenda and that the journalist had to choose an angle for the story, he said.

In his address to the jury, Declan Doyle SC, for Ms Davison, said she had no option but to sue, particularly when Ryanair responded in an aggressive and bullying way to her complaint.

When her solicitors wrote seeking an apology, Ryanair’s response was “how dare you and unless you back off we will give the correspondence to the media,” counsel said. “That was the kind of bullying and threatening behaviour of Ryanair in this case,” he said. Her only option was to sue or to “crawl under a stone”.

Ryanair’s suggestion that saying someone was bordering on being a racist was not the same as calling them a racist was “nonsensical”, counsel said.

He urged the jury to use its common and street sense to come up with a figure which would appropriately compensate Ms Davison for the actions of this “enormous bullying defendant called Ryanair”.