Judge strips Labour Party of legal protection on Qormi club
A judge has stripped the Labour Party of legal protection with regard to the lease 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, which only increased to Lm85 (€197) in 2002 after the death of their mother.
In a decision handed down yesterday, Mr Justice Robert Mangion, presiding over 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 constitutional and 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 to the liquidation of actual civil damages suffered, this does not 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 purpose of calculating 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 case law, did not order the eviction of the tenants, but instead ruled that the lease 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, while lawyers Robert Abela, Ian Borg, Abigail Caruana and Jacqueline Grech represented the defendants.