Judgment on relief and permission to appeal in BAA’s application for review pursuant to section 179 of the Enterprise Act 2002.
By its judgment of 21 December 2009 ([2009] CAT 35) (“the Main Judgment”) the Tribunal upheld BAA’s application for review of the Report of the Commission on the ground of apparent bias, whilst rejecting BAA’s second ground of challenge, which alleged that the Commission had not complied with the requirements of proportionality in certain respects. The Tribunal left over the question of relief to be determined following further argument, in the absence of agreement between the parties.
In relation to the question of relief, the Tribunal approved the substance of the parties’ agreement to quash certain parts of the Report of the Commission, and remit the matter to the Commission for reconsideration, but rejected Ryanair’s proposed directions requiring the Commission to take specified steps in relation to the conduct of that reconsideration.
Separately, the judgment also sets out the Tribunal’s reasons for refusing the Commission’s and Ryanair’s requests for permission to appeal from the Main Judgment. Both the Commission’s and Ryanair’s applications were refused on the basis that the grounds of appeal raised had no real prospect of success and there were no other compelling reasons to allow the appeals to go forward. The applications are able to be renewed to the Court of Appeal itself.
