Alleged AI-generated legal papers “rife” with references to irrelevant, misquoted and non-existent rulings which were filed by a Ryanair flight attendant in a €170,000 discrimination claim were “an abuse of process”, an employment tribunal has found.
Rejecting a discrimination complaint against the airline in a decision published on Wednesday, a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator wrote that the claimant “wasted” her time and the airline’s chasing down his “phantom citations”.
Flight attendant Fernando Oliveira, a Portuguese national, had accused Ryanair DAC of subjecting him to discrimination on the grounds of race and family status in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998.
The complaint – in which Mr Oliveira was seeking €170,000 in compensation – was denied by the airline.
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The tribunal heard Ryanair stopped short of dismissing Mr Oliveira last autumn, handing him a final written warning and a paid suspension after investigating a series of complaints against him from other crew.
Mr Oliveira, a Ryanair employee since 2022, alleged he had been falsely accused by his supervisor of, among other things, drinking on the job, making racist comments and threatening another flight attendant from late 2023.
Later, he said, he was subjected to an “orchestrated campaign” of “false reports” by that supervisor’s colleagues – including that he allegedly wished her “dead” – for which he was handed a final written warning and a paid suspension.
Ryanair’s legal team said Mr Oliveira continued to “agitate” on the matter after his internal appeal to the disciplinary appeal was rejected. The airline argued the equality claim was an “abuse of process” and should be thrown out without a full hearing.
Roland Rowan, appearing for Ryanair instructed by solicitor Killian O’Reilly of Fieldfisher Ireland, told the WRC at an initial hearing in March this year that it seemed to him Mr Oliveira’s legal filings “may have been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence”.
He said seven citations referenced by the claimant in the papers “do not appear to give the outcome” Mr Oliveira relied upon.
This included a 2016 Equality Tribunal ruling in which Mr Olivera said €15,000 was awarded for a breach of equality legislation when in fact the case was “dismissed for want of jurisdiction”, Mr Rowan submitted.
Counsel also pointed out that Mr Oliveira had quoted what looked like two WRC adjudication reference numbers in the papers, but that these seemed to be “phantom determinations”.
Mr Oliveira called the “insinuation” that he used AI to prepare his legal papers a “baseless, unprofessional and ad hominem attack designed to distract from the merits of the case”.
Adjudicator Patricia Owens noted that when the case was called again for hearing, Mr Oliveira “acknowledged that he may have used AI” and “became defensive” about it.
She wrote in her decision that Mr Oliveira “wasted a considerable amount of time” with submissions that were “rife with citations that were not relevant, misquoted and, in many instances, non-existent”.
Ms Owens wrote that she was “not particularly concerned” about whether Mr Oliveira used AI nor not but that parties at the WRC were obliged to make “relevant and accurate” submissions which “do not set out to mislead”.
“The complainant’s attempts to bring in new allegations and claims late in the day and to seek to rely on phantom citations to support his claims can only be described as egregious and an abuse of process,” she concluded.
As the complainant had not established an inference of discrimination or shown any “cogent evidence” to back up his claims of victimisation, harassment or sexual harassment, she dismissed his complaint.
