Court throws out libel case filed by Yorgen Fenech against Manuel Delia

A court has dismissed a libel suit filed by Yorgen Fenech against blogger and civil society activist Manuel Delia, over the latter’s refusal to publish a right of reply to a blog post.

The post concerned a fleet of electric buses allegedly procured by government from one of Fenech’s companies.

Delia’s post “Nobody Moves” cited a Times report on a €1.7 million fleet of electric buses delivered by a company owned by Fenech, the alleged mastermind in the Caruana Galizia assassination, and his family, and another €200,000 government spend from the same supplier to install charging stations.

Lawyer Charles Mercieca, who represented Fenech in the case, had written to Delia the next day in an unsuccessful attempt at publishing a right of reply, denying the claim as a “false and a complete lie” and denouncing it as “another instalment of an unprecedented campaign of fake news and intentionally misconstrued facts designed to prejudice and mislead readers into perceiving Yorgen Fenech in a negative light.”

Delia refused to publish the reply, corresponding with the lawyers that his blog post simply commented on a report published on the Times, which stated that the buses had been imported by Commercial Vehicles Imports Limited, which was “a company owned by TUM Invest, an offshoot company of the Tumas Group owned by the Fenech family.”

“If it isn’t, can you kindly clarify whether your email to me is suggesting that ‘the Fenech family’ is no longer an appropriate description of ‘Yorgen Fenech and his family’ or how my choice of words can be described as ‘false and a complete lie’.”

Tum Invest is owned by Anthony Fenech, an uncle of Yorgen Fenech, in what was a separation of group assets from the original Tumas Group back in 2015.

In a previous sitting, Magistrate Rachel Montebello had adjourned the case to today for judgment.

When the case was called this morning, the magistrate declared that the case was being dismissed, with costs to be borne by the plaintiff.

In her judgment refusing the claim, the magistrate observed that the right of reply submitted by Fenech’s lawyers “consisted not only of an evident submission of the applicant’s opinion of the publication in general, but also an imputation of the defendant’s intentions…This is being said because it is manifest that this part of the applicant’s reply is written as an expression of his opinion that the publication of the false statement had taken place intentionally and with the intention of misleading the publication’s readers, prejudicing the applicant’s position: a view which the defendant is not – and cannot be expected to be – in agreement with."

Lawyers Andrew Borg Cardona, Matthew Cutajar and Eve Borg Costanzi defended Delia. Lawyer Charles Mercieca and Gianluca Caruana Curran represented Fenech in the proceedings.