FORMER MISS World Rosanna Davison smiled broadly yesterday after a High Court jury awarded her €80,000 damages against Ryanair after finding a press release posted on the airline’s website defamed her.
The 27-year-old model claimed the release wrongly meant she was racist, elitist and jealous of not being included in a Ryanair charity calendar featuring members of the airline’s international cabin crew wearing bikinis and under headings including Miss Cockpit and Miss Fuel Pump.
About 6pm yesterday, a jury of eight men and four women found in favour of Ms Davison and awarded her €40,000 compensatory damages and €40,000 aggravated damages. Her counsel Declan Doyle SC had urged she be appropriately compensated for the actions of this “enormous bullying defendant called Ryanair”.
The airline’s head of communications Stephen McNamara remained unrepentant, however, declaring to journalists outside the court that an apology was not required.
Initially he said the company would be appealing the decision, but a later statement from the company said an appeal would not be pursued.
The release at the centre of the case was posted on November 11th, 2008, over remarks by Ms Davison relating to the absence of any Irish female cabin crew from the Ryanair charity calendar for 2009, launched the previous day.
Asked by a journalist about the absence of Irish female cabin crew from the calendar, Ms Davison 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 . . . Irish women are gorgeous”.
Ryanair’s release stated it was hitting back at the comments which “bordered on racism and demonstrated an elitist attitude against Ryanair’s international cabin crew”.
All cabin crew were invited to apply for the calendar, only a small number of Irish staff applied and one Irish girl selected for it was later unavailable, it said.