Why are they raising the damages for libel when full damages are never awarded as things stand?

Simple – they want to take libel cases out of the magistrates’ courts – and away, I would suspect, from Magistrate Francesco Depasquale who hears all of them – and return them to the judges’ courts where they were heard originally, so that they can drag on for years and years and years and years, as they did before (I’ve had one pending for 18 years) while being heard by random judges who know nothing about the media, the press, and public interest/freedom of speech issues.

And just as one magistrate now hears all libel suits, we’re probably going to end up with a situation in which one judge – like Judge Cocaine or his best buddy Judge Wenzu – hears them all. Which suits me fine, since I will never have to appear before them because of fair-trial requirements under human rights law.

Maximum damages for libel are currently set at €11,850. The government’s proposal to raise those damages to €20,000 means that libel cases can’t be heard by magistrates, because of the ‘monetary threshold’ that divides the competence of magistrates’ courts from those of judges.

This is the only reason why the maximum damages are being raised. My lawyer, who has fought more libel cases than any of us have had hot dinners over a long career, tells me that he knows of only one case in which the plaintiff was awarded maximum damages of €11,850. The sums more usually range between €1,000 and €3,000, with €1,500 being the odds-on favourite.

It follows that if maximum damages of €11,850 are never awarded – except for the once – then there is no prima facie need to almost double the maximum. So the real reason is an ulterior motive: that of removing them from the magistrates’ courts. Now we have to look out for the ulterior motive in doing that. I rather suspect it will present itself once we know who they’re planning on having made ‘libel hearings judge’.

There is a solution, though: they’ve proposed maximum damages of €7,000 if the prospective defendant apologises because the case goes to court. So we can all apologise as tersely as possible and keep our cases at magistrate level where they properly belong.

If this man is going to be the judge who hears libel suits, then neither I nor anybody who works for or owns Malta Today or Illum can appear before him. And that is obviously going to be a massive problem.