Government expected to vote down SLAPP amendment to defamation law

The government is not expected to vote in favour of an amendment to the Media and Defamation Bill that would outlaw the use of SLAPP lawsuits against the Maltese press.

MaltaToday understands that Nationalist MPs have been informed of the government’s intentions when the debate of the law continues on Monday.

A well-placed source said the government would presented its “studied position” on Monday, but it seems the disagreement concerns the way European court judgements have to be upheld by the Maltese courts.  

A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they abandon their criticism or opposition.

The tactic is employed by rich organisations that use the threat of expensive lawsuits in foreign courts to force news organisations to cave in to pressure, and was recently used by the private bank Pilatus as well as citizenship experts Henley & Partners.

The Nationalist Party has made the SLAPP amendment its main contribution to the prospective media reform bill, which will change the way defamation proceedings can be initiated.

Under the amendment, any judgement of any court outside Malta on alleged defamation, handed down against Maltese residents, would be considered “contrary to the public policy or to the internal public law of Malta” when the defendant would not have defended the case on its merits in the foreign court.

It also proposed that it will be a matter of the public policy of Malta that proceedings in respect of any publication, made by a person or entity normally resident or domiciled in or operating within Malta, shall be brought in a Maltese court and that these courts will have exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine such proceedings “irrespective of whether the publication in question is hosted or otherwise broadcast from servers located outside Malta”.

The recent revelation that Pilatus Bank had instituted defamation proceedings against the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Arizona, as well as threats made by the bank and by citizenship experts Henley and Partners, to other media houses have brought the SLAPP threat to the public’s attention.

In the United States, the “SPEECH Act” passed in 2010, prohibits the recognition and enforcement of foreign defamation judgments.