Updated 8pm

Former police inspector and FIAU manager Jonathan Ferris has been awarded damages to the tune of €20,000 over discriminatory treatment suffered at the hands of former police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar. 

Ferris had instituted proceedings in 2019 claiming that the commissioner’s failure to reinstate him to the police force after he was sacked from the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit breached his fundamental human rights. 

The former police officer also claimed that his rights were breached further by the original decision whereby he was not granted a secondment from the police force to the FIAU. 

Some 26 other police officers had been seconded to other government entities as well as to the private sector since 2013. 

Failing such secondment in his case, Ferris had to leave the police corps when he joined the FIAU in 2016. 

Ferris argued that such discriminatory treatment in his regard meant that he lost the right to a service pension. 

When delivering judgment on Thursday the First Hall, Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, presided over by Mr Justice Toni Abela, observed that it was not easy to analyse evidence with respect to the issue of secondment.

The practice surrounding internal organization within the corps was “hardly conventional".

Such terms as secondment, transfer and movement were sometimes used “interchangeably” and did not always have the same meaning. 

As for the issue of reinstatement, requested by Ferris in June 2017, a series of parliamentary questions revealed that there were other persons who had resigned and then sought to be reinstated. 

For Ferris’ request to succeed, he needed to satisfy a set of criteria which, according to then-police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar, the inspector did. 

However, while waiting for an answer to his request, Ferris had gone public with the story, criticising the way the situation was being handled. 

That fact, taken within the context of rumoured leakages to the media at the time, did not at all help his reinstatement bid.

The court was not in any way attributing those leaks to the applicant, but that was a factor which appeared to trouble the commissioner at the time. 

The applicant could have been “more prudent and careful,” observed the judge. 

Rather than seek an explanation, Ferris turned immediately to the media.

Had he sought an explanation, that request in itself, whether rejected or left unanswered, would have served as more clear and convincing evidence.

Such a factor was also to be taken into consideration by the court when meting out a remedy. 

No matter how well-intentioned, in the court’s view, Ferris ought to have followed other paths rather than go to the media as soon as he got to know that others had been reinstated before the elections. 

On the other hand, the court could not ignore the fact that over two hundred persons had been reinstated before those elections, including some whose criminal conduct sheet was tainted. 

Ferris put forward a similar request which was left pending until the elections were over. 

All throughout the court proceedings, this point was not clarified.

When testifying, Cutajar “seemed as though wanting to say something, but he always held back from saying it or stating it clearly,” observed the judge. 

The closest the former commissioner got to this was when he made reference to “allegations about the applicant,” then linking that to the issue of leaks, whilst adding that he did not “recall exactly.”

Focusing upon the moment when Ferris made his request, the court concluded that there was no clear reason why that request, unlike that of two hundred others, was left pending until the elections were over. 

“Certainly not because of the [media] interviews which happened a month later,” remarked the court. 

Differential treatment is acceptable when done with a legitimate aim, but not so when it has “no objective and reasonable justification,” went on judge Abela, citing caselaw. 

However, the fact that Ferris gave public interviews placed him in a position whereby an order for his reinstatement could not be considered as a compatible remedy by the court. 

Moreover, such reinstatement could only be authorized by the Prime Minister who was not a party to the proceedings. 

The court thus upheld the applicant’s claim of discrimination limitedly with respect to the reinstatement, awarding him €20,000 by way of compensation for the breach of rights. 

Lawyers Evelyn Borg Costanzi and Matthew Cutajar assisted the applicant.