Letters | Sunday, 21 February 2010

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Chief Justice was never petitioned to transfer case

I refer to the article by Mr Raphael Vassallo under the title “Blog’s objections to magistrates ‘pointless’” (14 February, 2010).
In the article it is stated that “…columnist Caruana Galizia petitioned the Chief Justice to have Magistrate Consuelo Scerri-Herrera removed from two libel cases in which she was involved…”. This is entirely not true. The Chief Justice has never received any “petition” from Mrs Caruana Galizia, or from anyone else for that matter, to have the cases to which the columnist refers transferred from one court to another. These two cases were only reassigned to another Magistrate in terms of articles 11(4) and 15 of the Code of Organisation and Civil Procedure after Magistrate Scerri-Herrera’s decree of abstention was brought to the Chief Justice’s attention according to the law.
This article also states that “…it transpired that a meeting was [held] between Scerri-Herrera and the Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano on the same morning of her abstention.” This is entirely a figment of your columnist’s imagination. No such meeting was held in connection with these cases; nor was the matter of her abstention ever discussed with her either verbally or in any correspondence.

Dr Marse-Ann Farrugia
Office of the Chief Justice

Raphael Vassallo: It was Daphne Caruana Galizia who originally signalled her intention to petition the Chief Justice to have two magistrates removed from her cases. The point of my article last Sunday was that any such petition would have been pointless, as there is already a legal provision catering for objections to judges. However, the allusion to a meeting between the Chief Justice and one of the magistrates was indeed a misunderstanding on my part. That error is regretted.

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