Labour loses rent protection on Qormi club, owners get €30,000 in damages

A judge has stripped the Labour Party of legal protection with regards to the rent of its Qormi party club, in a judgment also ordering the Attorney General to pay €30,000 in damages to the property’s owners.

The applicants – Clothilde Borg, Carmen Mizzi, Joseph Mizzi, Salvinu Mizzi, Vincent Mizzi, Isabelle Mercieca, Cecilia Dalli and Felicita Micallef – demanded that the court recognise a breach of their right to enjoy their private property because they were unable at law to increase the annual €197 rent payable to them, and either evict the tenants or update the rent payable according to current market prices.

The family, who represent less than a third of all the owners of the property in question, had originally rented out the premises to the MLP in 1951 for Lm65 a year and then only increased to Lm85 in 2002 – or €197 a year –  after the death of their mother.

In a decision handed down yesterday, Mr Justice Robert Mangion, presiding the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction, ruled in favour of the family.

In its deliberations on damages, the court distinguished between the Constitutional and the civil proceedings for damages. “Although it is true that the value of compensation given by the court after the finding of a breach of fundamental rights does not necessarily equate with the liquidation of the actual civil damages suffered, this doesn’t mean that material damages ought to be ignored for the purpose of the exercise at hand.”

The court said that one of the factors it had taken into account for the purposes of damages was “the inertia on the part of the State, which over the years remained passive towards the need for effective legislative intervention to create a proportional balance between the burdens and rights of the owners of these properties.”

The fact that the applicants only represented less than a third of all the owners of the property in question was also a factor in quantifying damages.

The court awarded the family €5,000 in moral damages and €25,000 in pecuniary damages.

The court, citing previous case law, did not order the eviction of the tenants, but instead ruled that the rent no longer enjoyed legal protection “in the eventuality of a court case for eviction being filed by the applicants.”

Lawyers Jason Azzopardi, Kris Busietta and Eve Borg Costanzi appeared for the owners, whilst lawyers Robert Abela, Ian Borg, Abigail Caruana and Jacqueline Grech represented the defendants.