Columnist loses libel appeal

An appeal lodged by columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia from a libel judgment was yesterday dismissed by Mr Justice Philip Sciberras in the Court of Appeal.

Ms Caruana Galizia had been ordered by the Magistrates' Court to pay Notary Mark Sammut Lm500 in libel damages after the first court concluded that she had libelled the notary in an article published in The Malta Independent in April 2005. The article was entitled "Hey, baby, there is a pistol in my handbag".

Notary Sammut had claimed the article contained false and defamatory allegations. On her part, Ms Caruana Galizia submitted that the article contained only proven facts and a fair comment on these facts.

Notary Sammut told the first court that the article had alleged that he had been stopped at Malta airport when trying to embark on a plane with a pistol in his case. According to the notary, Ms Caruana Galizia had indicated that he had a specific criminal intention to take the pistol on board the aircraft with him. Notary Sammut categorically denied this allegation.

The Magistrates Court had ruled that a balance had to be maintained between the right of freedom of expression and the right of the individual to his reputation. The court concluded that Notary Sammut had not intended to carry the pistol on board with him, and therefore any negative comment made in the article about this was libellous in his regard.

Ms Caruana Galizia then appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Mr Justice Sciberras noted that Notary Sammut had specifically complained of certain allegations made by Ms Caruana Galizia. These were that he was a notary and Malta Labour Party candidate who had presided over that "silly patt mal-poplu charade" before the last elections, and that he had been caught at the airport "trying to board a plane with a pistol in his handbag".

The article further added that Notary Sammut could have got away with this because he was "a very important person, son of Alfred Sant's consultant Frans Sammut" and a MLP candidate. 

Notary Sammut further said the article suggested that the MLP "puts its prospective candidates through a rigorous psychological testing process before it accepts them".

But Ms Caruana Galizia told the court that the article was supposed to be humorous and that she had written it on the basis that she was entitled to comment on a situation as she saw it.

Mr Justice Sciberras said, however, that the significance and meaning of words was not that attributed to them by their author, but that which the reader of normal intelligence would attribute to the words on reading the article. The court had therefore to establish what the ordinary reader would understand from this article.

Ms Caruana Galizia had made a number of insinuations on Notary Sammut's conduct, even on his professional conduct, and had denigrated his reputation. An author of an article was liable for insinuation as well as for explicit statement, said the court, for insinuation might be as defamatory as direct assertion and even more mischievous.

The court therefore dismissed Ms Caruana Galizia's appeal and confirmed the judgment.