For those who at some point had to attend a court sitting, contempt of court is not a new term. How it is regulated by law tends to be less clear.

Judgments specifically dealing with contempt are few and far between. The Court of Appeal recently gave one such rare decision concerning contempt of court which in very eloquent Maltese summarises this legal institute.

The case concerned two fines for contempt of court issued by a Magistrates' Court against the Commissioner of Police for failing to summon specific people wanted by the court as witnesses in criminal proceedings.

Contempt of court is a strange legal animal in itself. While it is punished through the criminal law (a fine or detention under the Criminal Code), it is regulated by the Code of Organisation and Civil Procedure. This law, of a civil law nature, lays down the procedures to be followed in cases of contempt.

In the current case, the Court of Appeal noted that the law differentiated between two types of contempt. The first is the so-called contempt in facie curiae, which consists of acts that offend the respect due to the court during a court sitting. Examples include disrupting proceedings, smoking in the courtroom, answering a phone call in the courtroom, or trying to take a photo of the court.   

The law authorises it to punish the violator there and then for contempt and impose a fine or even detention according to the provisions of the Criminal Code.

Other forms of contempt that do not involve bad behaviour during court proceedings cannot be punished on the spot. Instead, the court must order the Registrar of the Civil Courts to initiate separate proceedings for contempt. This is because at that point, the act in question ceases to concern the court in particular but becomes a question of the administration of justice more generally.

The Court of Appeal here gave some examples from previous cases, such as parties to court proceedings dragging their feet, obstructing a court officer while he is executing a court order, or failing to observe a court order.

In finding the Commissioner of Police guilty of contempt promptly during the sittings and fining him for it, the Court of Magistrates was finding him guilty of contempt in facie curiae.

This distinction between the types of contempt was crucial in the case at hand for two reasons. First, strictly speaking there is no right of appeal from a finding of contempt in facie curiae. The appropriate remedy is to request the court to reconsider its decision. Secondly, if one wants to challenge the decision by saying that this was not a question of contempt in facie curiae and so the wrong procedure was followed, one must appeal within two days from the date of the decision.

In the present case, the Commissioner of Police wanted to contest the ability of the Court of Magistrates to find him guilty of contempt in facie curiae. He argued that what had happened did not qualify as that type of contempt.

The Commissioner of Police was first found guilty and fined €1,000 on May 7, 2024 and a further €500 on June 18, 2024. He requested a reconsideration of both decisions, and following a negative result appealed before the Court of Appeal on August 1, 2024. This was two days after being notified that his second request for reconsideration had been turned down.

Faced with this situation, the Court of Appeal declared that the appeal was filed late. What the Commissioner had to do was file two separate appeals, one for each decision, within the two-day period stipulated by law.

David Chetcuti Dimech is a Junior Associate at AB&A Advocates.