The hunters' federation lost an appeal from a libel judgment on a technicality after the application was declared null and void because it completely omitted to mention the object of the appeal.

The Federation for Hunting, Trapping and Conservation (FKNK) had sued the Institute of Maltese Journalists for libel following an article published in The Times in March 2007.

The first court had ruled that an organisation such as the FKNK did not have a judicial interest to move such a suit for damages. Members of an organisation who felt it had been libelled could not sue for libel on behalf of the organisation. Such members could, however, file individual libel actions.

The FKNK then sought redress at the Court of Appeal in its inferior jurisdiction.

On appeal, the journalists' institute pleaded that the application of appeal was null and void because it did not contain an explicit request for the revocation or change of the judgment appealed from.

Mr Justice Philip Sciberras yesterday ruled that no correction to the appeal application could take place. The case did not involve a simple error in the wording of the appeal but a complete omission of the object of the appeal.

No remedy was, therefore, possible and the appeal was null and void.

The court added that this could be the result of the wrong practice of transposing the written submissions filed before the first court into an application of appeal. Such a practice, the court noted, implied lack of respect towards the first court.