Or that now that he is part of the naghmlu li rridu government ‘click’, he no longer has any reputation to protect.

This sums it up:

Defence lawyer Joe Giglio said in court that people cannot play with court charges as they deem fit or as best suits them. (The Malta Independent)

Thank you.

“Mr Scerri had started the case in his capacity as a businessman after having taken offence over an e-mail sent by Mr Mamo to him, copied to then Education and Culture Minister Dolores Cristina and Finance Minister Tonio Fenech in reply to an email by Silvio Scerri to the MCCA and copied to the same ministers.” (Times of Malta)

It is possible to defame a party in a private letter or email, but one would need to consider all circumstances. In this case Silvio Scerri was copied in Mr. Mamo’s email which was a reply to correspondence initiated by Mr. Scerri.

The only way to know how the courts would have seen this would have been for Mr. Scerri to let the courts proceed with the case.

Instead, he chose to drop the case. The Times did not even report whether the content of the contested email was made public in court, and as a consequence the public has no idea what was the defamatory material.

Of course, this raises the question whether Mr. Scerri’s abandonment of the court case was intended so that the content of that email will never be made public in the courts.

As pointed out by Daphne, Mr. Scerri is in his current political position of “Don’t you know who I am” with the Minister for the Police etc etc etc presumably because of the reputation he built in his business. So if there is anything that we should know about that reputation that may be contained in that email, now we will never know it.

Yes.

If not, can you defame a third party in a private letter or email?