Valium rapist's damages case against Maltese woman to continue after court rejects plea of nullity

A case for damages against a Maltese woman, filed by "Valium Rapist" Johann Stellingwerf, will continue, after a court rejected her initial defence that the request cited the wrong law.

The First Hall of the Civil Court, presided by judge Joseph Zammit McKeon, heard how the woman had been ordered by a district court in the Dutch city of the Hague to pay Stellingwerf nearly €25,000.

The Maltese case had been filed to have the Dutch judgment recognised and executed in Malta.

That judgment had been handed down in March 2019, confirming Stellingwerf as the woman’s creditor.  Stellingwerf requested that the judgment be executed in Malta and insisted that the woman had assets which could be seized to make good for the debt.

On her part, the woman had argued that the action was null because applicable EU law was not Regulation 44/2001 as cited by Stellingwerf, but 1215/2012, known as the “Brussels Recast.”

The court examined the way the plea of nullity was dealt with in local jurisprudence and noted that in principle, nullity of the initial application was “an extreme sanction that should not be granted easily.”

Quoting from previous decisions by the Court of Appeal, Zammit McKeon said the court must only uphold such requests for nullity in extreme cases where the fault in the act could absolutely no be tolerated without damaging a principle of procedural justice.

The judge noted that the Brussels Recast was intended to improve the previous regulation and itself  states that continuity with the previous regulation should be ensured.

When decisions given by a judicial body in another EU member state are required to be enforced by another member state, this should not be rejected by the second state  simply because an interested party would have cited particular EU regulations  instead of others, more so in the case at hand where it emerges that the regulation was intended as an improvement on its predecessor.

Pointing out that the intention behind the Brussels Recast was not to overturn the previous regulatory regime, but to improve, facilitate and de-bureaucratise the cross-border enforceability of judgments made in member states, the judge rejected the initial defence, ordering the case to continue.