Silvio Meli does it again (and no doubt, again and again and again)
Silvo Meli: CULPA IN ELIGENDO
As the Latin expression has it, CULPA IN ELIGENDO. The fault lies in the choosing (of him).
timesofmalta.com, this morning:
UPDATED – WOMAN AWARDED €799,168 FOR GENDER DISCRIMINATION
The daughter of a former port worker who was not allowed to take her father’s place of work due to her gender has been awarded almost €800,000 in damages by the First Hall of the Civil Court.
Victoria Cassar filed her writ in 1993 against the Port Workers Board.
She told the court that her father, port worker Carmelo Abela had retired from work in August 1992. The filling of a vacant post among port workers was regulated by the 1996 Port Worker Regulations whcih stipulated that eligibility to fill a vacancy was limited to the eldest son of a port worker.
Mrs Cassar said that she was the eldest of her father’s three daughters and that the Port Workers Board had not allowed her to fill her father’s vacant post on the basis that she was a woman.
She had then discovered that her father’s brother had applied to be registered as a port worker in her father’s place and that the application had been accepted by the Board.
Mrs Cassar had then requested the courts to award her damages on the basis that she had suffered a financial loss.
In yesterday’s judgment Mr Justice Silvio Meli pointed out that another court had delivered a partial judgment in this case in 1999 and that the hearing of the case had then been suspended until such time as a constitutional application filed by Mrs Cassar was decided upon.
It resulted that in 2002 the constitutional case was decided and that the court had ordered the Port Workers Board to allow Mrs Cassar to register herself as eligible to be a port worker with retroactive effect back to 1992.
Yesterday’s judgment was therefore limited to the damages suffered by Mrs Cassar.
Mr Justice Meli pointed out that Mrs Cassar was a Bank of Valletta employee and that her salary in this post was considerably less that what she would have earned as a port worker. The difference between the two salaries in the period between 1993 and 2010 amounted to €288,868. To this sum the court added EUR53,000 which represented benefits received by port workers and the sum of EUR457,300 which consisted in the difference in Mrs Cassar bank salary and that of a port worker until her retirement.
The court added that it was basing its decision on the attitude of the Board which had continued to deprive Mrs Cassar of her rights despite previous court judgments.
In total Mrs Cassar was awarded €799,168 in damages.
——
Again, Silvio Meli uses the same cracked reasoning and illogical arguments to liquidate damages as he did has done in Mario Gerada’s case: what she would have earned as a stevedore for the remainder of her working life (and then some more on top of that for good measure).
This is completely unheard of. And to make the situation still more dangerously ridiculous, Mrs Cassar has been working with Bank of Valletta for all these years and hasn’t been starving in the street.
But what I find most shocking of all is the way Judge Meli ignored completely the inherent discrimination embedded in the law which was the basis for this case in the first place.
A law which says that only the sons of stevedores can inherit their job at the ports is not discriminatory because it excludes stevedores’ daughters. It is discriminatory because it excludes everyone else and makes a stevedore’s job at the ports an inherited right passed down from father to son (or daughter).
So what we have here is a shocking situation in which a woman who was in a favoured position – yes, favoured, because if she were not the daughter of a stevedore she would have had no suit – has profited from being in that privileged position, to the tune of EUR800,000.
She is not the victim of discrimination, but a person unfairly privileged, through discrimination embedded in the law, over the all others who wish to become stevedores – or get a stevedore’s pay without having worked for it.
That is a travesty of justice. Silvio Meli probably finds it easy to play around with ‘il-flus tal-gvern’, which actually comes from the hard-earned money of ordinary people.
Let’s watch him try this with a private company and see where it gets him. Perhaps he might consider bankrupting a business and putting 50 people out of work just to “compensate” one person in this crazy and irresponsible way.
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In fact, it is culpa in eligendo not eligedo.
[Daphne – Yes, I had correct it already, having heard the voice of Horatio Vella yelling at me in my head.]
At this rate the Hon Justice Silvio Meli will soon create unaided the “hofra” needed by the LP for its electoral agenda where previously no “hofra” existed but only praise from the European Union about the local handling of the worldwide economic crisis by the Gonzi government.
Doubtlessly the Labour Party would be expected to show its gratitude, if elected.
No wonder it costs more to bring a container from a ship in Valletta to a factory in San Gwann Industrial Estate then it does to bring the same container from a port in Kazakhstan to the port of Valletta.
Let’s do the maths. The judge has deemed fit to award Euro 288,868 as the DIFFERENCE in salary between a stevedore’s and a BOV employee’s, between 1993 and 2010, therefore 17 years, making an amount of Euro 17.000 per annum.
I would assume that the salary at BOV would be in excess of Euro 13,000. Therefore one does not need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that a port worker earns in excess of Euro 30,000. This quite apart from the Euro 3000+ in “benefits” per year.
So we have a port worker who inherits his job from his father, who either drives a forklifter, or a truck, earning Euro 33,000+ per annum.
His divine right to earn this is not dependant on his efficiency, professionalism, or the state of the world economy, but only on his birth right.
There is no market economy whatsoever in this, no supply and demand, much less nobility or pride in one’s job. Only a right inherited to earn more then a professional would earn or a middle/senior manager whose parents have sacrificed to provide an education fr their less fortunate offspring.
I honestly don’t get it. I do understand why the politicians will not touch the hot potato. Basically they lack the backbone. However I really cannot understand how with such a “fair” society, such bogus, antiquated principles are allowed to continue.
Is this not a case where a public enquiry should be launched to asses the criteria Judge Meli is jusing when handing out this largesse?
The ex-nurse can afford avery expensive car when supposedly jobless, This lady has a regular well-paid job anyway, so why all this sudden generosity with the tax payer’s money?
In the meantime , people who have ended up with a permanent disability as a result of an accident, or whose property was damaged or relatives killed as a result of construction work carried our by third parties, wait for several years , (sometimes as much as 15 years or more) for a sentence to be passed and where damages awarded end up totalling to a few paltry thousands of euros.
And obviously, any move by the government to censure Justice Meli will be met with uproar from the Opposition, therefore putting him in a “win-win” situation where he can do no wrong.
What’s the betting that once Labour are elected, there will be fewer such large “awards” dished out.
“The difference between the two salaries in the period between 1993 and 2010 amounted to €288,868. ”
This works out at almost €17,000 per year difference in salary between a BOV employee and a port worker. Are BOV workers paid peanuts ? Surely not, otherwise the Unions would be all over BOV.
A judge who treats taxpayers’ money like beans.
A magistrate who lends his taxpayer-paid limo and chauffeur to his wife to have her toy deliveries fulfilled.
Another who holds office in a sports organization contrary to rules.
A magistrate who lies under oath.
A judge who took his salary for seven years and never showed up for work.
A chief justice jailed for taking a bribe from a drug dealer and held in a mental institution instead of the prisons.
A judge jailed for the same crime.
I wonder why you opted for archaeology instead of law at University cause it seems that you know very well how to interpret the law.
[Daphne – The basis of law is logic. So is the basis of archaeology, but the latter is much more interesting.]
I am not the son of a stevedore.
I am going to sue the Ports authorities because those Port Workers Regulations discriminated against me from obtaining that licence from the late Carmelo Abela in 1992.
I am hoping that Justice Meli will preside over my case.
Do we know which lawyer appeared for Mrs. Cassar?
[Daphne – Frank Cassar.]
I stand to be corrected, but there was at least one court judgement, dating back several years, which established that the prohibition of daughters of stevedores from inheriting their father’s job amounted to discrimination. So Judge Meli may have acted on the basis of case-law.
JUDGE DREDD (what a comic)
Top stuff!! Did you see the film (not the naff one with Stallone)?
Boy do we need him in Malta!
Who are the Honourable Ministers of Justice who are guilty of culpa in eligendo by appointing Dr Meli as magistrate and judge?
Daphne, mhux ta b’xejn il-PL jobghoduk ghax veru taf xi tghid.
Hemm bzonn isir xi haga biex din is-sentenza tinbidel ghax veru tal-misthija. Bl-istess argument jien li qatt ma hdimt ix-xatt nista inressaq kaz ghax gejt diskriminat ghax ma thallejtx nahdem ix-xatt, avolja missieri qatt ma applika jew hadem ix-xatt. Only in Malta.