Lawsuit dismissed
©IMAGO
Seven years after the death of Argentine professional Emiliano Sala in a plane crash over the English Channel, a court has dismissed English third division club Cardiff City’s compensation claim against FC Nantes. The commercial court in Nantes, western France, ruled that the Ligue 1 club was not at fault in the crash of the sports plane. It also ruled that Nantes had suffered non-material damage and ordered Cardiff to pay 480,000 euros.
Cardiff had approached the Nantes court in 2023 to claim around 120 million euros for loss of income that it said the club had suffered as a result of the death of the player, who had just moved from Nantes to Cardiff. The player, who was 28 at the time of the accident, died on January 21, 2019 in a crash in a sports plane that was taking him to Cardiff, Wales, for his first training session with his new club. He had decided on the charter flight in order to have more time to say goodbye to fellow players and friends.
The pilot of the accident plane is said to have had neither a license for commercial flights nor for night flights and was aware of technical defects in the aircraft after a telephone conversation published by the British broadcaster BBC. The businessman who organized the flight with the single-engine plane has already been sentenced to 18 months in prison for endangering the safety of an aircraft.
