Uniformity in compensation for accidents

Adrian Galea (‘Compensation for accidents’, May 29) has revived the long unsolved problem of the lack of legal and judicial certainty and uniformity when liquidating damages for accidents caused.

He justly recalls and laments the fact that, in spite of a white paper back in 2010 proposing legislative amendments necessary in order to establish clear standards for fair compensation, to date, nothing has come out of it and conflicting interpretations by different judges are still the order of the day.

It is interesting to note that, as recent as in January 2015, the Għaqda Studenti tal-Liġi published a position paper on the reform of the law on civil damages.

The paper contains a good number of valid proposals to redress this shortcoming.

Furthermore, by a particular judgment delivered by then magistrate Joanne Vella Cuschieri sitting in the Gozitan Superior Magistrates’ Court on September 20, 2018, a subtle attempt was made to establish a clear formula for the liquidation of damages depending on the circumstances of the particular accident.

And, by another judgment delivered a few days later by the First Hall of the Civil Court on October 17, 2018, Mr Justice Grazio Mercieca also went about trying to establish a long-felt need for certainty and uniformity in the way damages should be liquidated and awarded after highlighting the legislator’s inaction and procrastination in making the necessary legislative amendments providing for a legal certainty giving less reason for the parties to litigate.

Will this renewed plea fall deaf on the legislator’s ears once  more?

Mark Said – Msida

Immediate action needed

A protest at a detention centre in 2019. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Everyone who read the Times of Malta’s national news article on the human rights report blasting migrant centres in Malta will be horrified by the revelations of their appalling inhuman conditions.

We have now been informed of this situation for a long time but we have received no news of any improvements whatsoever.

As the article reports, any communication with those in the centres is also severely limited, to the point of there not being any.

We know important talks are going on in Libya to try to regularise the migrant situation but our need to provide more, and truly acceptable, emergency accommodation is immediately pressing and essential.

I am sure that a steady scheme of dispersion of those in the detention centres is possible and should be started on whatever scale is at first practical.

We have some charities that could help expand this and there are properties that could be allocated for this purpose temporarily.

The movement of migrant refugees is a problem for the whole European Union and the United Nations but here we have an immediate Christian duty to make a humane  start to what will be necessary in every country of Europe.

Christopher John Linskill – Ħamrun

Balluta Bay

Now let’s see who wins in this country: either the capitalist (for which read the Planning Authority, the Fortina Group or the “investors”) or the people (the swimmers, the families, those with enough grey stuff in their heads to know that “where boats, here ferries or barges, are moved in, swimmers are simply kicked out”).

Yes, let us all now see… and then ponder on the move the people will make over the coming 15 months. It will indicate whether the majority of citizens are morons or not.

John Consiglio – Birkirkara

Sant and Gozo

A heading in the Times of Malta (May 29) reads ‘Sant urges Gozitans to save the island from construction’. May I humbly suggest to Sant that, when he next comes to Malta from his comfortable home in Brussels, he visits his “friends of friends” at the Planning Authority and urge them to put the brakes on the obscene approval of horrible constructions.

Mario Dingli – Sliema

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