The historic 'language question' in Malta's courts has returned to haunt a former HSBC employee who sued the bank's board for allegedly not being paid outstanding wages upon termination of his employment.

The case was filed by the police after the bank allegedly failed to pay a former employee whose termination of employment was declared unfair by the Industrial Relations Tribunal in November 2015. The bank's failure was deemed to be a breach of the collective agreement.

Before going into the merits of the case, Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech observed that the summons had been filed in English.

She observed that the Constitution and the Criminal Code laid down that the language of the courts was Maltese. The Judicial Proceedings (Use of English Language) Act further laid down that where one or more of the parties was English-speaking and the Maltese-speaking parties made a declaration consenting to the proceedings being conducted in the English language, or where none of the parties was a Maltese-speaking person, the court may order that the proceedings be conducted in the English language.

However, no such declaration had been made, nor was the court requested to issue such an order.

The court noted previous cases where cases were thrown out because of applications made in English.

Therefore, the court said, once the summons was issued in English, it was considered as non-existent. It followed that the summons could not be seen as having interrupted the one-year prescription period from the decision of the tribunal. The prescription period was therefore considered as having expired on November 18, 2016.

The language question dominated Maltese politics in the 19th and early 20th century as the British colonial government sought to remove the Italian language from the courts, substituting it with English and Maltese. 

Maltese became the general language of the courts in 1932, the situation being further reinforced in the constitution some 50 years ago.  

In October last year a petition was filed on Parliament's website so that the use of the English language could be put on equal footing to Maltese in judicial proceedings. That petition made no progress.

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