The Court of Appeal has confirmed a judgement whereby a man was condemned to a week's imprisonment after construction on a site in St Julian's continued despite a warrant of prohibitory injunction which ordered works to stop.

The case was instituted by the Registrar of the law courts against Mark Debono and Waterproof-It Ltd.

The Civil Court on June 9 had condemned Mr Debono to seven days imprisonment and fined his company €500 after finding that they had not abided by the warrant of prohibitory injunction issued against then.

The case started on September 30, 2008, when Dr Simon Galea Testaferrata and his wife filed a request for the warrant to stop Mr Debono and his company from continuing works on a site in High Street, St Julians. The warrant was temporarily issued on the same day.

Dr and Mrs Galea Testaferrata subsequently filed an application where they informed the court that despite the warrant, the works had continued.

On October 23, 2009 the court made the warrant definitive. On that day the court also concluded that the accused had not abided by the warrant and ordered the Court Registrar to institute proceedings for contempt

In their appeal, Mr Debono and the company denied showing disrespect to the court and pleaded that because of a mistake in dates, they had lost the trail of the case before the first court and had missed two sittings. They had therefore been unable to contest the merits of the case. They also pleaded that several contractors were working on the site ad it had not been proved that they had continued to work on the site.

The Appeals Court noted that the accused had said that, through their mistake, they had missed two sittings. As a result, the court said, they had no right to argue that they were not given the opportunity for a fair hearing when they had, without justification, failed to produce evidence when so requested.

The court said it would not go into the merits of the case, since this appeal was over contempt of court, but it noted that according to Dr Galea Testaferrata, it had always been Mr Debono who contacted him about the works. Indeed, the company which was carrying out the works belonged to his wife. His involvement was certainly not limited to membrane.

The Court of Appeal said the lower court had a right and a duty to ensure that its authority was respected, especially when contempt was manifestly shown and its decree was ignored.

The orders of the court had been ignored and the building had been completed. The punishment ordered by the first court was therefore justified. Once the work had been completed, however, the warrant of prohibitory injunction was being lifted, without prejudice to other civil action which Dr and Mrs Galea Testaferrata could take.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.