A man who was jailed for a week for contempt of court was today awarded compensation of €1,000 after a court found that his fundamental right to freedom had been violated.

Edmond Mugliett filed his constitutional application against the Attorney General after he was jailed for a week last December by the Court of Appeal.

In June 2006 Mr Mugliett had been ordered to refund €94,339.59 to the heirs of the late Notary John Hayman. It resulted that the funds had been taken by Mr Mugliett from an account he held jointly with Dr Hayman in April 2001. Following Dr Hayman’s death his heirs requested the court to order Mr Mugliett to refund the money to the said joint account in order for judgment to be delivered on the issue of who the funds belonged to.

The court had ordered Mr Mugliett to refund the money.

The Court Registrar filed an action for contempt of court against Mr Mugliett when he did not comply with the court order. The Court of Appeal jailed him for seven days.

Mr Mugliett claimed that this sentence was in violation of his fundamental human right to freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti in today's judgement pointed out that failure to comply with the terms and conditions of a judgement delivered by a court amounted to contempt of court. However, case law of the European Court had established that detention should be seen as a remedy of last resort. Lesser measures were to be considered and it was only if they were found to be insufficient could detention be invoked.

The heirs of the late Dr Hayman were obliged to ensure the enforcement of the judgement delivered against Mr Mugliett and they were entitled to issue executive warrants against him.

The Court of Appeal in its judgement delivered last December had not investigated whether the heirs had in fact taken such action. That court had ordered a prison sentence rather than investigating whether lesser measures could have been invoked.

Mr Justice Chetcuti found in favour of Mr Mugliett and declared that his right to liberty had been violated. Mr Mugliett was awarded €1,000 in compensation.

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.