The Lands Authority has been ordered to pay a fine of €132,000, as it failed to abide by the terms of a court order surrounding an expropriation deal.
The fine, the bill for which will be footed by the taxpayers, after a court found that the authority had not followed the letter of a separate court order that bound it to expropriate land, owned by a certain Mario Dingli by a specific date.
The First Hall of the Civil Courts presided over by Mr Justice Henri Mizzi, decided in favour of Dingli after the authority failed to formally expropriate land owned by Dingli in a time frame that was established in a previous lawsuit.
The case goes back to 1995 when the government filed a declaration to expropriate part of Dingli's land, amounting to 25 square metres, to build a water culvert in Triq il-Kokka, San Ġwann.
In 2008, Dingli filed a lawsuit – which he won - against the authority as it had fixed 173 square metres of the road.
Dingli argued that the authority had carried out these works without formally expropriating the land and without providing proper compensation.
Some 11 years ago, the court ordered the authority to begin procedures to formally expropriate the land in three months. Should it fail to do so, then the authority was ordered to pay a penalty of €500 a day until the proper procedures begin.
The deadline to do this was 31 August 2019, but the authority only filed a declaration to expropriate the land on 21 May 2020.
This means that the authority took 264 days after the deadline to begin procedures, which means that – with a fine of €500 a day – the full fine owned by the authority is €132,000.
Dingli subsequently filed a case with the First Hall of the Civil Court in 2023, arguing that the authority had failed to follow the court's orders.
The authority argued that it had already begun procedures days after the court’s sentencing as it was working on a preliminary report to establish the value of the land that was filed before the deadline on 27 August.
The report valued the land at €26,209, which is the amount owed through compensation. Dingli filed a court application to contest these amounts in a separate case, but these procedures are still ongoing.
Lawyers Jose' Herrera and David Camilleri assisted Dingli.