Farah and Others v British Airways Plc and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 06 December 1999 |
| Date | 06 December 1999 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL.
Before Lord Woolf, Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice Chadwick
Practice - facts to be fixed before strike-out
A judge erred in striking out a claim for negligence brought against the Home Office by would-be immigrants who claimed that an airline had refused to transport them to the United Kingdom after an immigration liaison officer had wrongly advised that they did not have the required documentation to obtain entry to the UK.
Whether or not the Home Office owed a duty of care to the immigrants in such a situation should be determined after the facts had been established, rather than on a strike-out application.
The Court of Appeal so held in allowing the appeal of the claimants, Mohamed Khalif Farah, Khadra Dirie Halane, Abdulahi Mohammed Abdula, Warsame Abdullahi and Sirad Moalim Osman, against the decision of Judge Riddell at Edmonton County Court on June 23, 1999 to strike out their particulars of claim in so far as they alleged negligence against the second defendant, the Home Office. The first defendant, British Airways, was not involved in the appeal.
Mr Nicholas Blake, QC and Mr Stephen Simblet for the claimants; Mrs Melanie Hall for the Home Office.
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS said that as this was a case where the judge had struck out the relevant parts of the particulars of claim, the facts set out in that pleading had to be accepted to be correct for the purposes of the appeal.
The claimants were Somali nationals who had purchased tickets from British Airways to fly from Cairo to London on October 21, 1992. On that date they had presented their entry documents to British Airways.
Only the fifth claimant had had a valid passport.
The first four claimants, however, had had declarations of identity documents issued by the British Embassy in Addis Ababa. They contended that they had all had valid visas granting them leave to enter the UK. British Airways had refused to fly them to London. As a result they had initially been detained in Cairo airport for five days and then deported to Ethiopia.
The action against British Airways was based on an allegation of breach of contract. The Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987 made a carrier who transported an immigrant who did not have the appropriate papers to support his admission into the UK liable to pay up to Pounds 2,000.
No doubt in consequence of that policy the British Government had...
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