Communicated on 4 December 2018
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 9028/09
AZADLIQ NEWSPAPER and Ganimat Salim oglu ZAYIDOV
against Azerbaijan
lodged on 5 November 2008
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns civil proceedings instituted against the applicants, a newspaper and its editor, in connection with an article titled “The Mystery of Cheap Meat in the Ministry of Defence”, which alleged inter alia that the Ministry was importing meat for soldiers from Ukraine, that the price of that meat was significantly below the market, that the meat came from Chernobyl and that it was of low quality. The Ministry of Defence sued the newspaper and its editor, claiming that the information in the article was false and damaging to the professional reputation of the Ministry and its staff. The domestic courts ruled in the plaintiff’s favour, finding that the defendants had been unable to prove the veracity of their factual statements, and ordered the newspaper to pay to the Ministry compensation for non-pecuniary damage in the amount of AZN 10,000. In their appeals, the applicants argued inter alia that the Ministry could not be considered as a legal entity and therefore had no standing under the relevant provisions of the Civil Code to claim damage to professional reputation, that the domestic courts had failed to make a distinction between facts and value judgments, that the courts did not take into account wider limits of criticism allowed by the Convention with regard to the Government, and that the compensation amount awarded was exorbitant in view of the newspaper’s very modest income.
QUESTIONS tO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been an interference with the applicants’ freedom of expression, within the meaning of Article 10 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference prescribed by law and necessary in terms of Article 10 § 2 in pursuit of a legitimate aim? In particular, did the Ministry of Defence have standing under Article 23 of the Civil Code to claim damage to professional reputation? Was the characterisation of the applicants’ utterances as statements of fact, rather than value judgments, justified? Was the amount of compensation for damages awarded in the present case in compliance with the requirement of proportionality?
2. The parties are requested to submit a detailed summary in English or French of the impugned article, as well as translations into English or French of the specific extracts of the impugned article which were found to be defamatory by the domestic courts.
APPENDIX
No.
Firstname LASTNAME
Birth year
Nationality
Place of residence
Representative
AZADLIQ
-
Newspaper registered in Azerbaijan
Baku
R Hajili
E. Sadiqov
K. Agaliyev
Ganimat Salim oglu ZAYIDOV
1963
Azerbaijani
Baku
R. Hajili
E. Sadiqov
K. Agaliyev
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy