Two landowners have been awarded €25,000 in moral damages after a court ruled that their fundamental human rights had been violated when their land at San Gwann was expropriated without their being given compensation.

The court heard that brothers John and Peter Caruana owned 2,250 square metres of land in San Gwann industrial estate, which land was expropriated by the government in 1988 for the construction a factory. But the Commissioner had not proceeded to finalise the acquisition of the land nor had any compensation been paid.

The brothers added that they were told by the Commissioner that payment would be made when the Lands Department had the necessary funds, but, by 2012, when they filed their court case against the Commissioner of Lands, the brothers had not received any payment.

They added that owners of property adjacent to theirs had received the compensation to which they were entitled.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Tonio Mallia noted that the Caruana brothers had only started to take action for payment in 2007 and said that this fact would affect the moral damages to which they were entitled.

The government was entitled to expropriate property in the public interest but it was also bound to pay compensation to the land owners within a reasonable time.

In this particular case, the Caruana brothers had had to wait for 25 years without receiving any payment. The court added that the government was facing claims for property expropriated many years ago but was not allocating enough funds to ensure that owners were compensated.

The court reserved the right of the Caruana brothers to seek real damages from the government and imposed a time limit of one month within which the Commissioner had to commence the legal process to acquire the land.