Cardiff City Compensation Claim Over Emiliano Sala Death Dismissed by French Court

Six years of litigation and a damages claim worth more than €120 million ended in a French courtroom with the claimant ordered not to receive compensation, but to pay it.

The Nantes Commercial Court dismissed Cardiff City's case against FC Nantes arising from the death of striker Emiliano Sala, ruled that the French club had not committed any wrongdoing, and determined that Cardiff had not suffered any compensable damage. The court then ordered Cardiff to pay FC Nantes €300,000 in damages plus an additional €180,000, a combined total reported as approximately £400,000 in legal fees and moral damages suffered by the Nantes club.

Sala, 28, and pilot David Ibbotson died when a Piper Malibu plane crashed into the English Channel on the night of 21 January 2019. The Argentine striker had agreed to join Cardiff from FC Nantes for a £15 million transfer fee two days before the crash. The flight was later characterized as an unlicensed commercial operation; business flight organiser David Henderson had hired an unqualified pilot, David Ibbotson, to make the journey from Nantes to Cardiff.

Cardiff's legal team, appearing before a solitary judge in the Nantes Commercial Court, argued that Sala's death directly contributed to the club's relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2018-19 season. The Welsh club sought losses reported variously as €120.2 million (£105 million) and €122 million, calculated on the basis that Sala could have kept Cardiff in the top flight and that the club had paid a £15 million fee for a player it could never field.

A pivotal argument at the December 2025 hearing centered on the role of Willie McKay, the man who booked the fatal flight. Cardiff argued McKay had been acting on behalf of FC Nantes when he arranged the journey; Nantes denied that claim. Cardiff had reached an out-of-court settlement with McKay in February 2024 under confidential terms reported to relate to the release of documents and messages about Sala's transfer. FC Nantes had disputed "the existence of any wrongdoing" on its part throughout the proceedings, as well as Cardiff's calculation of damages.

The dismissal left Cardiff liable for substantial costs on top of a club trajectory that has steadily worsened since 2019. Relegated from the Premier League that season, Cardiff dropped further to League One in April 2025.

The Nantes ruling is not the only active legal front Cardiff faces over Sala's death. The club is separately suing insurance broker Miller Insurance Services LLP for £10 million, alleging the firm failed to act "with the reasonable skill and care expected of an insurance broker." Cardiff's claim contends that Miller failed to properly explain the concept of an "insurable interest" for player transfers and the requirement of a "prompt" notification of a transfer to secure coverage. Club bosses stated they would have requested £20 million in coverage for Sala two days before the fatal crash if they had been properly informed of the notification requirement.

A 2022 inquest into Sala's death found that he had died from head and chest injuries and had become overcome by carbon monoxide from the aircraft's exhaust system, with the jury determining he was most likely unconscious when the plane hit the water.

Sala's death and the years of proceedings that followed drew sustained attention to the opaque mechanics of football transfers and to the use of unregulated charter flights to move players between clubs during transfer windows. Voice messages released after his death revealed his own unease about the pace at which events had unfolded around him in his final days. With the Nantes case now closed, Cardiff has given no public indication of whether it intends to appeal; the Miller Insurance litigation, and its unanswered question of whether a £20 million policy should have been active before Sala's last flight, remains unresolved.