A former minister’s aide was penalised by a court for issuing crippling garnishee warrants against Daphne Caruana Galizia, but then dropping his libel suits over her infamous brothel story without presenting a single piece of evidence.

The court declared that the evidence showed Joseph Gerada had acted rashly when suing for libel, when in truth he had no evidence to prove he was not at the brothel in Germany on the specific dates and times the late journalist had indicated.

Two precautionary warrants were requested and obtained each by former minister Chris Cardona and his personal aide lawyer Joseph Gerada in February 2017, to secure damages in the libel cases filed against the journalist.

Each garnishee order targeted €11,646 in the journalist’s bank account, bringing up the total assets frozen to some €44,000.

That legal move was triggered by what Caruana Galizia had written on her Running Commentary blog, claiming that Cardona and his aide were spotted at a brothel in Velbert, Germany, while on an official work-related trip.

A follow-up post by Daphne Caruana Galizia on the story, referring to Joseph Gerada.

Both Cardona and Gerada filed libel proceedings but waived them after the journalist was murdered in 2017.

Her heirs sued the former minister and his aide for having acted maliciously when issuing those garnishee orders, then failing to produce evidence to support their defamation claims.

In April, a magistrates’ court threw out the heirs’ claims against Cardona, after upholding the defendant’s plea that the subject matter had already been decided upon in a previous case between the same parties.

However, last week, when judgment was delivered in Gerada’s case, another magistrate took a different approach, concluding that the defendant had “abused of the judicial system” when taking the “unprecedented” route of issuing precautionary garnishees against the journalist.

No evidence to contradict Daphne’s allegations

In a strongly-worded and detailed judgment, Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia declared that the evidence showed that Gerada acted rashly when suing for libel, “when in truth he apparently had no evidence to prove that he was not at the brothel” on those specific dates and times.

The fact that he later dropped the libel cases without a single piece of evidence, not even his own sworn testimony, proved that.

As the person filing the proceedings, Gerada had the duty to present his evidence first to show that Caruana Galizia’s story was defamatory. According to the libel proceedings dated April 24, 2017, that appeared to be Gerada’s intention.

Daphne Caruana Galizia

Then Caruana Galizia asked the court to preserve geo-localisation data concerning Gerada’s and Cardona’s phone.

Gerada was expected to start his evidence stage on October 23, 2017, with questions prepared for the journalist. But a week before that sitting, Caruana Galizia was murdered, and the libels were stultified.

Days later, Gerada asked the court to revoke the garnishees so that the heirs could access the bank funds.  But he only dropped the libel cases in October 2018.

Other persons who had sued the journalist for libel had dropped their claims within days or weeks of the murder, observed Magistrate Farrugia.  Gerada chose not to, but still produced no evidence.

When sued by the family over the garnishees, he explained that he dropped the libels because of national and international pressure.

The heirs did not want him to drop the libel cases because once he did that, the geo-localisation data would be lost forever, observed the court.

Gerada said that Cardona had likewise dropped the libels, and so he did not wish to go ahead alone, since he had “no interest against Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family”.

The court could not understand such reasoning.

If Gerada truly felt defamed by those stories that he claimed had caused him great personal and professional harm, then he had every right to pursue those cases, irrespective of what Cardona had decided “for his own personal reasons”.

Instead, Gerada did not even give his version in court.

He argued that if the heirs did not have access to the journalist’s sources, neither did he. That argument did not make legal sense, said the magistrate.

Once he filed the libels, he was bound to produce evidence and could not rely on the journalist’s sources.

Gerada later admitted he had no evidence to contradict what the journalist had written about him.

‘Crossed a line’

The court was morally convinced that Gerada had sought those garnishees “by way of retaliation because he was upset” over what the journalist had published, and his aim was to inflict the maximum possible financial damage.

Asking for provisional garnishees to secure eventual damages in the libel suits was “unprecedented in Maltese legal history”. That move raised issues about its proportionality in relation to the right to freedom of expression.

And when attempting it, Gerada knew that “he crossed a line that no one had ever dared cross”. He evidently “abused of the judicial system” when requesting the garnishees.

Chilling effect on journalists

Gerada’s actions triggered such debate that the law was amended in 2018 to prohibit such precautionary garnishees in relation to libel suits.

His actions were to be “censored”.

They were meant to have “a chilling effect” not only on Caruana Galizia but on all journalists who realised, for the first time, that their assets could be frozen for months, or possibly years, in crippling libel cases.

The court observed that Gerada was “very evasive” when asked to explain why he had revoked the garnishees.

And the fact that a crowdfunding campaign had garnered €69,000 in one day, to counter his garnishees, did nothing to exempt Gerada of responsibility.

Those freezing orders “dried up [the journalist’s] financial liquidity”, causing a great headache and depriving her of financial independence.

When all was considered, the court upheld the heirs’ claims and ordered Gerada to pay a penalty of €8,000 for the malicious garnishees, plus a further €326 in damages.

Meanwhile, the heirs have appealed the judgment delivered in separate proceedings against Cardona.

Lawyers Peter Caruana Galizia and Eve Borg Costanzi represented the heirs.