Another chapter in a tortuous space odyssey has been played out in the high court.

Manx space exploration company Excalibur Almaz has been embroiled in a legal battle, both here and in the States, with wealthy Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie.

Mr Horie lodged a claim in a court in Texas in November 2014 alleging fraud and breach of trust against Excalibur Almaz chairman and Texas attorney Art Dula, associate attorney in Dula’s law office Anat Friedman and business partner John Buckner Hightower.

The Japanese entrepreneur alleged he was fraudulently induced into investing US$49m into the space travel enterprise when in reality, he claims, there never was and never would be any such business.

Seeking the return of his US$49 million, Mr Horie claimed Mr Dula had used the funds he had invested in Excalibur to purchase from a Russian company four Almaz spacecraft capsules and two space stations - without disclosing that the purchase contract prohibited any modification so as to allow them to be returned to flight.

Excalibur Almaz stored two of the former Soviet space stations and a space capsule in a hangar at Jurby.

It announced plans to launch trips to a space station orbiting the moon with the 500,000-mile round trip costing each passenger a cool £1m.

But the venture never got off the ground and the mission was aborted in 2015.

Key to the dispute is a 2010 deed of assignment and settlement signed by Mr Horie.

Excalibur Almaz say that document discharged the company from any claim ’whether known or unknown, suspected or unsuspected’.

Any claim had to be dealt with in the Manx courts, they say.

Mr Horie, for his part, maintains the deed had nothing to do with the alleged breaches which were the subject of the proceedings in Texas.

In September 2018, Deemster Andrew Corlett rejected Excalibur’s application for a summary judgment which meant that the case would go to trial, and his ruling was upheld on appeal.

In another twist, Deemster Corlett has now granted an application by Mr Horie to substantially amend his defence and counterclaim.

His lawyer argued the amendments were ’principally consequential’ on removing references to the pleadings in the Texas proceedings’.

But Excalibur’s advocate claimed they contained additional allegations.

Deemster Corlett considered that the amendments did have a good prospect of success.

He said while litigants who belatedly make applications to alter pleadings for tactical or malicious reasons should be penalised, in this case the legal issues are not straightforward and span two separate jurisdictions.