Compensation for rights violation

The First Hall of the Civil Court has declared that two judgments by the Court of Appeal dating back to 2008 and 2009 were null and void as they violated one of the parties’ fundamental human rights to a fair hearing.

The Attorney General was ordered to pay compensation of €6,500.

Practical Trading Co. Ltd had filed a lawsuit against the Controller of Customs before the First Hall of the Civil Court in 1999. In October 2002, that court had dismissed the pleas raised by the Controller of Customs and ordered him to refund the company an amount to be established later.

Among the pleas raised by the Controller (and dismissed by the first court) was that the company did not have a legal interest to file the lawsuit. According to the first court, this plea was irrelevant to the case and the court had prohibited the parties from producing evidence on the lack or otherwise of a legal interest.

In June 2005, the First Hall of the Civil Court had ordered the Controller to pay the company €78,297.

The Controller appealed from both judgments and, in 2008, the Court of Appeal had dismissed most of the Controller’s claims but had found that the company had not had a legal interest in the original litigation. The judgments of the first court were therefore overturned.

Practical Trading then filed a request for a retrial before the Court of Appeal but this request was dismissed in 2009.

The company claimed in its constitutional application that its right to a fair hearing had been violated by the two judgments of the Court of Appeal because it had decided the litigation between the parties on the issue of legal interest. This was an issue on which the parties had been expressly prohibited from producing evidence before the first court.

Mr Justice Gino Camilleri ruled yesterday that when parties to a lawsuit were stopped from producing evidence on the issue of legal interest, the parties were entitled to expect that no decision would be taken on that matter.

Practical Trading had found itself in a position where it was faced with a Court of Appeal judgment based on the issue of legal interest when it had not been allowed to produce evidence thereon. This was in violation of the right to a fair hearing.

Mr Justice Camilleri, therefore, declared that the two judgments delivered by the Court of Appeal in 2008 and 2009 were null and void. The court ordered that the case be remitted to the First Hall of the Civil Court for evidence to be heard on the question of lack of legal interest.

The court found that the Controller of Customs was not to blame for the human rights violation and ordered the Attorney General to pay €6,500 by way of compensation.