Qatar Airways has successfully dodged an Australian lawsuit over an incident at Doha airport in which women were forcibly removed from planes by armed guards and some intimately examined.
However, while the federal court dismissed the case against the airline, justice John Halley determined the five Australian women bringing the case could instead refile their claims for damages against Matar, a Qatar Airways-owned subsidiary engaged by the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) to run Doha airport.
The five women initiated legal action against the airline in 2022, later adding the QCAA and Matar to the case over the October 2020 incident, seeking damages over alleged “unlawful physical contact”, false imprisonment and mental health impacts, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
They were among more than a dozen passengers who were escorted off the Sydney-bound Qatar Airways plane by armed guards as authorities searched for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a plastic bag at Hamad international airport. The infant survived.
The women were taken to ambulances on the tarmac and some were forced to submit to invasive examinations for evidence they had recently given birth. The lawsuit claims one passenger was forced to undergo a strip-search holding her five-month-old son.
Qatar Airways and Matar had been seeking to prove that the “men in dark uniforms” who took the women off the plane, as alleged by the women, were Qatari police under the command of Qatar’s ministry of interior (MOI), and not employees or agents of the airline or airport. They also claimed a nurse in an ambulance who performed the examinations was not employed by them.
The QCAA – owned by the Qatari government – was the third party attached to the initial lawsuit, and was separately seeking a stay on the basis of sovereign immunity.
In a judgment on the various interlocutory applications handed down in Sydney on Wednesday, Halley agreed that the QCAA was immune from the court’s jurisdiction, and found that Qatar Airways should not have to go to trial for the case because its employees could not have influenced the actions of the Qatari police.
“The proposition that Qatar Airways was able to exert any relevant control over the officers of the MOI conducting the police operation or the nurse in the ambulance can fairly be characterised as ‘fanciful, trifling, implausible, improbable, tenuous or one that is contradicted by all the available documents or other materials’,” the judgment said.
The action was launched in an Australian court because both Australia and Qatar are parties signed up to the Montreal convention, which governs airline liability around the world. Under the convention a lawsuit can be brought before the courts in the jurisdiction where a passenger lives.
Halley found the applicants were not able to bring a claim against the airline under the Montreal convention, because the view of the women that the convention covered any of the operations of embarking or disembarking the aircraft was incorrect.
Halley ordered the women, who have been represented by Marque Lawyers, to pay the costs of Qatar Airways and the QCAA.
However, Halley found Matar had not proven that its employees or contracted security personnel did not give any specific directions to the women during the incident.
Halley found it was necessary for a trial to determine the extent to which its employees or security personnel were involved in the incident; any specific directions they gave; and the extent to which they were subject to the control of the MOI’s police officers.
“The proposition that its employees gave directions to the applicants in the manner alleged … is not inherently implausible,” the judgment said.
As such, Halley found the five women could refile cases against Matar for negligence and vicarious liability for assault and false imprisonment.
Marque Lawyers’ Damian Sturzaker, representing the women, said: “We are carefully reviewing the reasons given by the court and to the extent that there are grounds will consider all avenues for appeal. We note however that the claims against the airport operator, Matar, remain on foot. Our clients’ resolve to continue to agitate their claims remains undiminished.”
A case management hearing has been set for 10 May.
The proceedings follow months of controversy over the Australian government’s refusal of Qatar Airways’ push to increase flights to Australia.
The five women who are part of the lawsuit earlier wrote to the transport minister, Catherine King, urging her to reject the airline’s request, and King said their experience was a factor in her decision.
