A mother condemned to pay libel damages to an obstetrician after her scathing email to a pre-natal class group ended up in the surgeon’s inbox has been cleared on appeal.
It all began eight years ago when Rebecca Zarb Gauci Maestre sent a strongly-worded email to “Parentcraft at Mater Dei Hospital”, claiming she had “been lied to in a horrible way” by her doctor who had “forced” her to deliver her baby through induced Caesarean section at 36-week term.
A month after delivery, the mother had turned up at Mater Dei Hospital with her baby daughter who was having difficulty breathing while feeding, having been told by “unidentified persons” that this was probably linked to the pre-term delivery.
“We put our trust and lives in the hands of doctors and pay them huge amounts of money for that privilege. No mother deserves to be treated like a lump of meat or a cash cow,” the e-mail read, without mentioning her doctor by name.
Although the email had been sent to Parentcraft, it was forwarded to various hospital departments including the Outpatients Department from where it was forwarded to the doctor’s receptionist, ultimately landing in the doctor’s inbox.
George Buttigieg, the woman’s obstetrician, filed libel proceedings against the sender of that email who countered that she had expected her writing to be dealt with confidentially, that it had never been intended for circulation, that she had not named the specialist concerned and that her allegations amounted to “fair comment”.
Two years ago, a Magistrates’ Court had upheld the doctor’s claim, declaring the e-mail as defamatory, awarding Buttigieg €1,000 in damages, while stating that an electronic message could easily be shared and that “one should use such means of communication with far greater caution since they might easily land the sender in some unforeseen controversy”.
Both parties appealed, the mother asking for the judgment to be revoked, and the doctor asking for a higher award of moral damages.
In its judgment, the Court of Appeal, presided over by Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff, concluded that “beyond doubt, the applicant [Buttigieg] was not identified nor identifiable” in the email which had been addressed specifically to “Parentcraft” and “was never intended to reach anyone else”.
The mother had testified how she had established a rapport with four of the midwives at the antenatal classes and had been assured that any communication with the group would remain private, between “myself, as mother, and they alone”.
The Court observed that when that email was shared, the nurse had breached both professional secrecy as well as data protection laws, adding that it was useless arguing that the sender had failed to request confidentiality.
The nurse must have checked the Patients Administration System at MDH to confirm the woman’s personal data, making sure that the sender of the email was the same person she knew to have been Buttigieg’s patient at a private hospital earlier on.
The Court observed that had the nurse, and possibly others, not undertaken such ulterior checks, “it would not in any way have been possible to identify the applicant,” thus upholding the woman’s appeal and revoking the first judgment.