Free speech and the free press will be getting some relief in Malta following the exit of Magistrate Rachel Montebello from the civil defamation Court after she was promoted to Judge. The court’s new bias seems to be in favour of free speech, as opposed to previously, when the Magistrate slapped journalists with libel damages as if she was selling pastizzi.
A Court presided over by Joseph Gatt has rejected libel claims by Kurt Buhagiar against MEP Peter Agius. The claims concern a sheep farm built by Kurt Buhagiar with EU funds. You can read more about it here.
Kurt Buhagiar is also the Labour Party developer who is responsible for the construction site that killed Jean Paul Sofia. Kurt buhagiar is also a government employee.
The Times of Malta is reporting that the Court ruled that Kurt Buhagiar did not prove how claims made by Peter Agius that he was potentially misusing EU funds would have harmed his reputation.
This is very good news because Courts have long been awarding libel damages against journalists and critics based on the feelings of the plaintiff and not on any tangible and actual damage that the journalist would have inflicted. If anything, the damage that most of these plaintiffs do is caused by themselves and their own actions.
Libel law needs to be changed to introduce symmetry in these cases, whereby plaintiffs would have to pay damages to the journalist whenever their claims fail.
You can read the reporting about the Court case here. The Corut sentence is not online yet.
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