Ryanair, which faces a €60,000 damages claim on behalf of a child who was scalded on a flight from Shannon to Wroclaw in Poland, has joined his grandmother to the proceedings as allegedly wholly or partly responsible for spilling a hot drink on him.Judge John O’Connor, ruling it was a matter for a defendant to join a third party subject to the court, acceded to Ryanair’s application to join Cacper Jacacki’s grandmother, Wanda Domzalska, formerly of Railway Meadow, Townspark, Longford, as a third party to her grandson’s personal injuries claim.County registrar Patricia Hickey had forwarded the application to a judge of the Circuit Civil Court after Ryanair solicitor Daniela Sabolova told her in written evidence that the airline had denied the boy had any case against the company.Sabolova stated it had been alleged the airline’s employees had caused Domzalska, referred to as the boy’s guardian on the flight and seated next to him, to spill the hot beverage over him.Barrister Shane English told the judge a full defence by Ryanair had been delivered in the proceedings in which it had been denied the boy had a cause of action against the airline and that any claim he might possibly have had to be against his grandmother and guardian on the flight.The court heard the boy had suffered second-degree burns and had alleged his grandmother’s hot drink had spilled on him. Sabolova, in her affidavit, stated that the hot drink had been delivered to his grandmother and claimed his injuries had been due to acts or errors on her part.She said the grandmother had a duty of care towards her grandson in circumstances where she was his grandmother and was in loco parentis of him on the flight.Solicitors for the boy and his father, Tomasz Jacacki, had claimed before Hickey that “such an unmeritorious and unworthy application” seeking to join the boy’s grandmother as a third party to the proceedings should never have happened.English, who appeared with Rebekah Tutty for Ryanair, had told Hickey it was a matter for the defendant or the court to decide whether a third party might be joined to legal proceedings.“What has been stated is outrageously egregious to my client and were the remarks not contained in a legal document I would be saying they were defamatory of my client,” English stated.The boy’s grandmother is now resident in Poland.