A judge has revoked a garnishee order issued against an Air Malta employee over the missed chartered flights to and from Denmark last summer, where children from various football nurseries were participating in a tournament.
The matter had made the headlines in July when hundreds of footballers from the nurseries of Pieta, Ħamrun and Birkirkara who were due to participate in the Dana Cup in Denmark were stranded in Malta and Denmark.
Air Malta had operated relief flights and the entire contingent was able to participate in the tournament and fly back to Malta.
It resulted that Air Malta operations controller Joffrey Mallia, who acted as the broker for the outbound and inbound flights – neither of which was operated by Air Malta – has a private company, Flight Support Services. He operated this charter flight using the VLM flight operator. The first group had left Malta a day late, missing the tournament’s opening ceremony.
A few days later, another group of children, parents, teachers and football coaches, were stranded at the Malta International Airport after flights they had booked through Mr Mallia were cancelled again. Mr Mallia had said that the VLM flight operator had cancelled the flight from Aalborg Denmark to Malta, and had offered no alternative.
On this occasion too, Air Malta stepped in and operated the flights.
Air Malta had suspended Mr Mallia while the company investigated whether he had breached any internal regulations by acting as a broker.
Mr Mallia, who is still suspended, had told Times of Malta that Air Malta was fully aware he had been offering the flight brokering services, so much so that the outbound flight had been booked through the national carrier.
Following the incidents, representatives from the three football nurseries had successfully filed an application for a garnishee order against Mr Mallia and his wife over the €160,000 in damages they claimed to have suffered as a result of the cancelled flights.
The application had been filed by Frankie Ciantar on behalf of the Pietà Hotspurs FC Academy; Noel Debattista on behalf of the Ħamrun Spartans Nursery and Jonathan Barbara, on behalf of the Birkirkara FC Youth Academy.
All had said they were filing the case on behalf of the minors who were due to fly as well as the adults who were accompanying them.
But Mr Mallia and his wife Sarah fought back, filing a separate application for the court to revoke the order it had issued.
In his decision, Mr Justice Grazio Mercieca upheld Mr Mallia’s argument that the people who requested the garnishee order on behalf of the football nurseries, the children and their parents could not do that according to law as they were not their juridical representatives.
Moreover, the Pietà and Ħamrun nurseries were not even registered in accordance with the Sports Act and they did not have a distinct juridical personality.
Mr Justice Mercieca, therefore, ruled that only Mr Ciantar’s request was valid according to law as Mr Debattista had not pursued the legal avenue.
On the €160,000 claim of damages suffered, the court said there was absolutely no explanation on how the figure was calculated and neither was there any explanation on how much Mr Ciantar himself was claiming in damages.
Mr Justice Mercieca also ordered Mr Debattista to pay Mr Mallia €1,164.69 in view of the fact that the garnishee order was not followed up by a court case. He also ordered Mr Debattista and Mr Ciantar to pay the court expenses.
Lawyers Keith Borg and Maryrose Micallef appeared for the Mallias.