Woman ordered to apologise, pay €2,000 fine following defamatory Facebook post

A woman was fined and ordered to issue a public apology after a court ruled a Facebook post she had published as slanderous.

Victoria Meyer appeared in in front of magistrate Francesco Depasquale this morning, facing defamation proceedings after in August 2013, she took to the Facebook group ‘Is-Salott,’ which has over 16,000 members, to lament that a particular vessel, the ‘Tia Buena’, had discharged sewage into the water in short proximity from bathers at St Peter’s Pool.

Meyer had claimed that a German friend of hers who she was accompanying at the time had fallen ill as a result of the sewage.

Tia Buena owners Malta Yacht Charters Ltd contacted Meyer to remove the false and offensive post, but the woman ignored the request and the post was still online on the day following the alleged incident. The chartering company sued the author of the post for libel.

The court observed that the accused worked as charter consultant with a rival yachting company, and therefore her credibility was placed in doubt.

Evidence presented in court also proved that the Tia Buena had not been in the vicinity of St Peter’s Pool on the day of the alleged incident.

Noting that Meyers had failed to issue a public apology on the same Facebook group, the presiding magistrate warned that it was “unacceptable within a democratic society for social media to degenerate into a virtual battlefield, a free-for-all characterised by lies, insults and slander.”

Social media was no longer serving its original purpose of bringing together family and friends, the court added.

The court held that it was not enough to simply withdraw the defamatory post, ordering the woman to publish within 30 days an explanatory post as dictated in the judgement and to declare that this was being done under court order whilst blocking readers comments on such post.

Meyer was also ordered to pay €2,000 by way of damages.