A lawyer for Joe Gerada, who was at the centre of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s allegations that he had attended a German brothel with Minister Chris Cardona, has lashed out at the journalist’s heirs for filing a case in which they claimed that a garnishee order made in a subsequent libel case against her was “malicious, frivolous and vexatious.”

Caruana Galizia had been sued for libel and, unusually for libel cases, hit with a number of financially crippling garnishee orders filed by Cardona and Gerada after publishing the story on her blog. But after the journalist was murdered, the men had withdrawn their cases – according to the Caruana Galizias, in an effort to bury incriminating mobile phone geolocation data that had been presented in court.

In a court application filed last December, Peter, Matthew, Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia had sued Gerada for withdrawing his cases and the relative garnishee orders without having presented any evidence in the cases. This, they said, meant that the cases had been filed “maliciously, frivolously and vexatiously.”

When the case was called for its first sitting this morning before magistrate Marseanne Farrugia, Lawyer Pawlu Lia accused Caruana Galizia’s widower, Peter, of trying to “resurrect the case,” which his client had withdrawn.

At the time of her death, “we had a large outcry,” reminded the lawyer, “and the other side asked for the cancellation of the case.”

The article had led to a great deal of suffering on Gerada’s part, including the breakdown of his marriage, said the lawyer.

The ill-tempered sitting was brought to order several times by the magistrate.

Caruana Galizia accused Lia of being scared of Vodafone’s geolocation data. “I am scared of no one,” replied the lawyer. “You asked me to cede it [the case] in the corridors of the court. There was your colleague Eve Borg Costanzi near you.”

“Let me tell you what they want,” continued Lia. “They want to resurrect the case and bring my client to testify so they can say a lot of things about him. I am not going to cooperate with the other side. When I tried to cooperate I was betrayed in the courtroom,” said the lawyer.

“I am sorry for you and what happened to your wife, although she also picked on me,” Lia said, to which Caruana Galizia replied “she was right, like she was on many other subjects.”

The court put the case off to April when Caruana Galizia will exhibit evidence of the cases that were ceded to show they were ceded.