Transport Malta libels over Facebook 'Mafia Authority' comment, 'a grave interference with freedom of expression,' court says

Two libel cases filed by Transport Malta against a haulier who dubbed it a “Mafia Authority” on Facebook have been dismissed, with the court ruling that the use of taxpayer funds to sue citizens for criticising the public administration “constitutes a grave interference with freedom of expression.”

This emerged from judgments handed down on Thursday in two libel cases filed by Transport Malta against Joseph Galea, who works as a forwarding agent. Galea, upset by the authority’ decision not to issue a licence for cargo vehicle number plates for the vehicles used by his business.

Galea alleged that the Authority had acted discriminatorily when it suddenly changed its interpretation of the definition of a haulier (burdnar) under the applicable regulations and had started to insist that he needed additional authorisation from customs to have his licence renewed. He insisted that the fact that he was already licensed as a haulier by the authority necessarily implied that he was qualified for it, arguing that Transport Malta’s refusal to renew it had made him unable to engage in his trade for several years and caused him to suffer a substantial loss of income.

The change had also caused disputes with Transport Malta about other vehicles of his, problems which Galea alleged had been created to deliberately stop him being served. 

The defendant had also accused Transport Malta of a number of systemic irregularities and abuse of power.

Magistrate Rachel Montebello observed that although Galea appeared to have been regularly attempting to communicate with Transport Malta officials about these issues, he claimed that his phone calls and emails were being ignored.

The court said it understood that this background of conflict and frustration had caused Galea to feel sufficiently aggrieved by the authority’s behaviour to publish the statuses which led to the lawsuit. 

But it was also noted that Transport Malta had failed to exhibit the emails it had made reference to in the application through which it filed the libel case. It had only exhibited undated screenshots from Facebook where Galea wrote: “Today I was threatened by the CEO of Transport Malta, Joe Bugeja, because he knows that I am right. He is part of the MAFIA of [the] Authority.”

Then, while making reference to a photo published by a third party, he had declared “yes, that is him all right. I hope that he isn’t following the order of some Minister, who threatened me from his secretary’s mobile phone.”

Pierre Montebello, Chief Officer, Land Transportation, at TM, had testified that in June 2020, he was informed that Galea had gone to the Authority’s offices and started calling the authority “a Mafia,”  also making a phone call to the authority, alleging that there was ‘a big mess’ and threatening to attack Montebello.

But Magistrate Rachel Montebello, deciding the case, noted that the Chief Officer’s testimony was not accompanied by any other form of corroborating evidence and had not even been mentioned in the sworn application, through which the lawsuit had been filed. 

The court said that although Transport Malta was a body established by law and not a part or a branch of the central government, it was still bound by the principle that neither the Government, nor departments or entities or corporations that are a part of it, could file court actions for defamation and request compensation for moral and reputational damage.

It was obvious, said the court, that Transport Malta, being a body established by law and managed by the Government via members directly appointed by the minister responsible for transport, is not a profit-making organisation for the purposes of the Media and Defamation act and could therefore never suffer financial loss as a result of the publication of defamatory statements.

“The authority [Transport Malta] is nothing more than a government institution which only performs public functions in the name of the government through the use and application of State finances and the court sees little point in protecting the reputation of an entity that doesn’t operate for profit, much less an entity which is a government institution or part of the public administration.”

“In fact, the court agrees that if State funds, which are after all derived from the taxes paid by the people, no less, citizens of the state, are allowed to be used to file defamation cases against those same citizens because they criticised or condemned the public administration, even unjustly, this would constitute a grave interference in the right to freedom of expression of one’s opinions.”

The magistrate added that this principle should also be strictly applied in cases where the impugned statements concerned the administrative functions of the public or government authority, amongst them the expenditure and administration of the public funds allocated to it, as well as transparency and non-discriminatory treatment in the service of citizens who use their services.

The court said that in the case at hand, it emerged that the allegation that could be distilled from the defendant’s Facebook statements “were, evidently, the maladministration by members of the Authority, who dishonestly and discriminatorily apply legal dispositions under the Registration and Licensing of Motor Vehicles Regulations with regard to hauliers.

“The rationale of the prohibition [that democratically elected bodies and their organs, such as departments of central government and local authorities, may not maintain actions for defamation] is that it is of the highest public importance that such bodies be open to uninhibited public criticism.

Lawyer Mark Busuttil assisted the defendant, while lawyer Christopher Cilia represented Transport Malta in both cases.