A long-running legal battle involving the Isle of Man’s aborted space programme is due to finally go to trial this month.

Island-based space exploration company Excalibur Almaz has been embroiled in a legal battle with Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie for more than 10 years.

Mr Horie lodged a claim in a court in Texas in November of that year alleging fraud, negligence and breach of fiduciary duty against Excalibur Almaz chairman and Texas attorney Art Dula, associate attorney in Dula’s law office Anat Friedman and business partner John Buckner Hightower.

He alleged he was fraudulently induced into investing $49m into a space travel enterprise when in reality, he claims, there never was and never would be any such business.

But his claims were dismissed by the Texas courts in March 2017 and his appeal was dismissed in September 2018.

Excalibur Almas issued a claim in 2015 against Mr Horie in the island’s high court, seeking enforcement of a 2010 agreement which they say indemnified them against costs. The company is also seeking damages for alleged breach of that agreement.

Its claim and Mr Horie’s counterclaim have been set down for trial in the Manx high court on April 28 with the case scheduled to last two and a half weeks.

In a judgment handed down on April 4 Deemster Andrew Corlett rejected an application by the Japanese defendant to have the hearing vacated. It had already been put back from spring 2024.

The Deemster said: ‘This case has had a most unfortunate history.

‘These proceedings have been ongoing since 2015, around about 10 years ago. It is very necessary that this matter be brought to a conclusion.’

Mr Horie had applied for the trial to be vacated on the account of the claimants’ belated disclosure of documents.

But the Deemster said he was satisfied this had been properly dealt with and a technical error had been to blame.

Subsequently, 998 pages were disclosed on March 26 followed by 164 pages two days later and 323 more on April 3, taking up about three or four lever arch files, which Deemster Corlett said was ‘perfectly doable’ before the trial starts.

He said he very much took into account that Mr Horie is a Japanese speaker who has no English.

Deemster Corlett said the size of the trial bundle, which extended to 84 lever arch files, had caused him a great deal of concern from the very beginning, and that the collection of documents was ‘clearly unfit for the purpose of a trial lasting two and a half weeks’.

He said, however, that he was satisfied that this could be very significantly reduced in size so that the trial can proceed in accordance with the agreed timetable.

In 2011 the Isle of Man was named the fifth most likely jurisdiction – after the US, Russia, China and India – to return man to the Moon.

But the space programme never left the ground and the Soviet-era technology that Excalibur Almaz was apparently going to use was put on display at the Jurby Motor Museum.