An appeals’ court overruled an appeal filed by The Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia, confirming the original libel judgment handed down by the magistrates’ court ordering her to pay notary Mark Sammut Lm500 in damages.

The magistrates’ court had ordered Ms Caruana Galizia to pay notary Mark Sammut Lm500 in libel damages, after it concluded that she had written a libellous article that had appeared in The Malta Independent in April 2005 entitled Hey baby, there is a pistol in my handbag.

Notary Sammut filed a libel suit against the columnist, stating that the article had false and defamatory allegations. However, Ms Caruana Galizia argued that the article contained only facts and was “fair comment”.

In handing down his judgment, Mr Justice Sciberras noted that the meaning of words was not attributed to them by the author but that which a reader of normal intelligence would attribute to them on reading the article.

As a result, he said, the court had to establish what the ordinary reader would understand when reading this article.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Sciberras said that Ms Caruana Galizia had made a number of insinuations about notary Sammut’s conduct, and as a result, had damaged his reputation.

As a result, Mr Justice Sciberras dismissed Ms Caruana Galizia’s appeal and confirmed the judgment issued by the magistrates’ court.