It was reported early last month, that MAS had decided to hand over a number of documents it had long kept secret, but in an extraordinary move this week, the airline said it will go to court in Sydney on Friday to fight the “Notice to Produce” order on the documents, The Courier Mail reported.
These documents include the insurance contract for MH370, training records for crew members, flight deck security procedures, and the contract with the engine manufacturer.
According to the suit by the children of passengers Rod and Mary Burrows and Bob and Cathy Lawton, the Notice to Produce required MAS to deliver the information by Oct 25.
However, lawyers for the carrier made an interlocutory application seeking to “strike out” the Notice to Produce claiming it was “defective and amounted to an attempt to seek discovery”.
“The documents sought are not relevant to any issues arising on the pleadings,” said the application, filed in the New South Wales Registry of the Federal Court of Australia, according to the Queensland-based daily.
The case by the Burrows and Lawton families were considered the most advanced of all court actions against MAS and lead insurer, Allianz.
It was reported in November that Allianz had wanted to cap any compensation offered to the families of Australian victims at A$250,000 (RM825,000).
The insurer had already paid each of the Australian victims’ families A$50,000 last year as per the Montreal Treaty on commercial aviation, but the families were asking for more.
With the suit, the children of the victims are hoping the documents will reveal some form of incompetency and failure on the part of the airline that could support their case.
In addition to filing its application, MAS has also asked the court to have the plaintiffs bear the cost of Friday’s hearing.
According to Courier Mail, the adult children of the Burrows and Lawtons have been repeatedly frustrated by what they call intentional delay tactics by lawyers for the airline so as to drag the compensation case out for as long as possible.
Aside from the compensation offered by the airline so far, the victims’ family are also seeking damages for psychological harm, including nervous shock and subsequent economic loss.
According to the claim, Malaysia Airlines “failed to take any adequate precautions for the safety of passengers and exposed the passengers to a risk of injury which could have been avoided by reasonable care”.
The carrier also “failed to prevent the flight from being operated in a manner that caused it to crash”, the claim said, The Courier Mail reported.
Malaysia’s national carrier, which had last year undergone a major restructuring exercise and ceased to operate under its previous entity, with assets and operations transferred to a new organisation and management, has insisted fair compensation has always been its priority.
The Courier Mail quoted a spokeswoman for the airline as saying “to date a significant number of next of kin had reached agreement and received full compensation”. However, she declined to give more details on the number of relatives of MH370 passengers who had received compensation.
According to the report, no Australians with claims against the airline arising from the loss of MH370 or the later disaster of MH17 have received any compensation as yet.
On March 8, 2014, MAS flight MH370 left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing, China, with 227 passengers and 12 flight and cabin crew.
However all communication was lost with MH370 somewhere over the South China Sea.
Later it was learned that the plane had made a sudden turnaround, flying back over the northern part of Peninsula Malaysia before heading south towards the Indian Ocean.
It is thought to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, about 2,000km west of Perth, in Western Australia.
The search for any wreckage of the plane is ongoing, though some parts confirmed to be from the Boeing 777 aircraft have been found off the south-eastern coast of the African continent, with most debris found off the Madagascar coastline.
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