Sixty Former Students Sue Espen Høiby, Brother of Norway's Queen, Over Flight School Collapse

Sixty former students of a bankrupt Norwegian flight school have filed a lawsuit against Espen Høiby, the brother of Queen Mette-Marit of Norway. The case centers on the collapse of the Pilot Flight Academy in Sandefjord, a town south of Oslo.

Høiby is a former pilot and aviation businessman. He was one of the owners of the school, which operated from Torp, the airport outside Sandefjord, according to NRK. The school went bankrupt earlier this year. A bankruptcy is a legal process in which a business that cannot pay its debts is wound down, and its assets are sold to repay creditors.

The fallout reached far beyond the classroom. Around 40 employees lost their jobs, and 160 students lost their places in their courses. Many of the students had paid their tuition in advance, in some cases about 250,000 Norwegian kroner, or roughly $25,000 at recent exchange rates. That money was lost when the school failed.

The lawsuit is backed by Parat, a Norwegian trade union, according to Town & Country. A trade union is a workers' group that represents employees in disputes with employers. The students also named Per Mikael Eriksson, the school's chief executive, as a defendant.

Høiby has denied all wrongdoing in the case. His lawyer says he never sat on the school's board and never represented the company to students. Neither the lawsuit nor the denial has been tested in court yet.

Høiby's name has appeared in Norwegian and international news before. In 2003, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail for assault, the BBC reported at the time. He is the oldest of Queen Mette-Marit's brothers. The queen is married to King Harald V, and the couple's household is separate from the court of the monarchy's official duties, but the family ties have drawn public attention through the years.

The students' case is one of several threads from the school's collapse. In January, OSM Aviation Academy, another flight training company, bought equipment from the bankrupt Pilot Flight Academy at Torp. OSM said at the time it was processing more than 100 applications from students affected by the bankruptcy.

For the students, the lawsuit is an effort to recover money and study time they say they lost. For Høiby, it is a question of whether he bears any personal responsibility for a company he says he did not run. Courts will decide that question, not the palace, and the case is at an early stage.