Boeing loses case against Denmark over fighter jet deal

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Boeing <BA.N> lost a lawsuit against Denmark on Friday which related to the Danish government's decision to buy Lockheed Martin's <LMT.N> F-35 Lightning II combat jets in preference to Boeing's F/A 18 Super Hornets.

Boeing had taken Denmark to court over a lack of access to documents used in the government's decision to buy the Lockheed Martin jets.

"The court has found that the authorities' decisions on refusal of access to the documents are legal and valid," Copenhagen's city court said in a summary of the verdict on its website on Friday.

Boeing said it was disappointed by the decision and would now review it and consider how to proceed.

After Denmark decided to buy 27 of Lockheed Martin's new warplanes in 2016, Boeing complained that the evaluation process for the planes competing for the order had been "flawed" and demanded access to the documents in the case.

"Boeing initiated this legal action to gain a better understanding of the evaluation process, in which we believe the Ministry made a number of critical errors and omissions in its evaluation," Boeing said in a statement on Friday.

Denmark's defence ministry had denied Boeing access because the U.S. company had not specified which documents it wanted to see, and that it would too large a task to find all documents since preparations for the order began in 2005.

(Reporting by Teis Jensen and Stine Jacobsen. Editing by Jane Merriman)