Originally Posted by Bealzebub
Yes you were researching this legal challenge almost 3 years ago to the day on this very thread.......
Presumably if it is so clear cut, you would have obtained a judgement by now?
Regretably, legal matters do tend to be very protracted.
Before one can bring an allegation of discrimination, a discriminatory act has to (allegedly) take place. As a result of Regulation 6(5) of the Civil Aviation Authority Regulations 1991 an individual has a right of appeal over ANY examination conducted by the CAA. Therefore, until that right of appeal has been exhausted one could not realistically bring an allegation of discrimination as an appellant may be succesful in his or her appeal. As you are probably aware such appeals are presently under way. Until these appeals are concluded it would be frivolous to even consider bringing any action in the higher Courts.
Originally Posted by Bealzebub
Unless the discrimination is unlawful under the relevant statutes
It would hardly be of any point in making such an allegation if it wasn't. As I mentioned earlier, there is established case law in this specific area, in the UK Courts and overseas, which supports the discrimination claim.
But as to your other point, yes, of course both parties will always find numbers of legal practitioners to support their respective arguments, hence the dynamic character of the law and its basis on precedence.
But as Shunter has so rightly put it, it is not up to the claimant to prove that he has been discriminated against - the law now requires the defendant to prove that they have not discriminated against the claimant. Simply putting it, they cannot do that as they have without doubt discriminated against a very large number of individuals. The only defence would be justification and in some circumstances that defence is not even available. If it is available, in order to prove justification the defendant will have to produce a cast iron safety case based on statistical data and risk analysis of which there is none!
It would be ludicrous to suggest that the reason that there haven't been CVD related incidents is because the standards prevent CVD persons from flying because the innacuracy of that argument is ably demonstrated by those countries that do permit CVD persons to fly commercially WITHOUT incident, even if only by day.
However, if it does come to the High Court I have little doubt that hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money will be spent defending an unsustainable argument, which has no evidence to support it.