A lawyer has taken the Commission for the Administration of Justice to court, accusing it of being unfair and biased towards her when it imposed a fine following her courtroom outburst against a magistrate.
Last July, Lynn Zahra, who is also the chairwoman of the Information and Data Appeals Tribunal, was slapped with a fine and warned by the commission that a similar offence in future could lead to the withdrawal of her professional warrant. The size of the fine has not been disclosed.
The case was heard by the commission’s Committee of Advocates and Legal Procurators. Though such proceedings are kept secret, details of the case emerged when Dr Zahra last month challenged the decision in the First Hall of the Civil Court, claiming that her right of a fair hearing had been breached.
The case goes back to December 9, 2013, when Dr Zahra accused Magistrate Francesco Depasquale of committing “obscenities” during libel proceedings instituted against her client and partner Joe Grima, who is Malta’s special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation.
The libel suit was filed by former EU permanent representative Richard Cachia Caruana.
Mr Grima was found guilty but filed an appeal.
She is seeking compensation for moral damages
Dr Zahra was fined for contempt of court and subsequently apologised for her remarks, but Magistrate Depasquale submitted a complaint to the commission about her “unprofessional and disrespectful behaviour”.
In her legal challenge, which is being heard by Mr Justice Silvio Meli, Dr Zahra said the fine imposed by the commission was disproportionately high in relation to the offence committed.
She also complained that committee member Vincent Galea should not have been allowed to preside over her case as part of the committee because, she claimed, he had once threatened her at the law courts.
According to Dr Zahra, Dr Galea felt aggrieved when she filed an appeal for a man whom he had represented as legal aid. She claimed Dr Galea told her he would make her pay for not asking for the release of his former client.
For the same reason, the lawyer held that Dr Galea should not have been allowed to sit on the committee in a second case against her in front of the commission, this time instituted by Inspector Jason Sultana.
Inspector Sultana filed his complaint to the commission after Dr Zahra accused him of recording a private conversation she’d had with him at the Sliema police station.
The committee was set to hear the complaint filed by Inspector Sultana on February 2 of this year, but Dr Zahra asked for it to be deferred saying she could not attend.
However, she took umbrage and felt her credibility was being put into question when she was asked toproduce a medical certificate to justify her request.
The committee warned her that failure to produce the medical certificate within three days would automatically mean it would decide the case as though she had never contested the claim.
In view of this Dr Zahra is asking the court, in a separate case to the one involving the Depasquale complaint, to declare that her fundamental rights were breached as she was not granted a fair hearing.
She is also asking the court to restart proceedings in front of a newly set-up committee made up of different members and is seeking financial compensation for moral damages suffered.