The court recorded that “according to the facts of the present lawsuit, the plaintiffs have not took the advantage of the above mentioned article saying about solving the dispute through extrajudicial manner.” Simizar Hovsepyan, judge of the Court of First Instance of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun Administrative Districts of Yerevan, issued a verdict on November 28, which we have officially received today. The lawsuit was filed by the former Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s daughter, Narine Sargsyan, and parent-in-law Hrant Suvaryan, Head of Financial Supervision Department at the Central Bank of Armenia, against Susanna Davtyan, Lemberik Khachatryan and third party Aravot daily for compensation for harm caused to their honor and dignity.
The 23-page lawsuit was redressed partly. The Court obligated the defendants, Susanna Davtyan and Lemberik Khachatryan, to publicly deny this information through www.aravot.am and publish the text of denial in the daily newspaper. By joint responsibility, 100 000 drams will be confiscated from the defendants in favor of the Prime Minister’s daughter and her parent-in-law as a “compensation” money. The same amount will be confiscated also from the defendants as a reasonable payment fee to the plaintiff’s attorney.
Note that the plaintiffs demanded in their lawsuit 300 000drams from the defendants for defamation and 250 000 drams for the attorney. The case was accepted by the court on April 18 of this year. The disputed publications were on February 7, this year, entitled “The Prime Minister’s daughter and her parent-in-law had owned my property” and on February 8, “Does the Prime Minister’s parent-in-law seize a land?” The citizens, according to these publications, were telling that the Prime Minister’s daughter and her parent-in-law owned their property, the stone-built garage. In fact, with regard to publication as of February 8, our media had listened to the second party, Hrant Suvaryan, who replied that this land has nothing to do with them, and the house adjacent to the land belongs to his son, and “Lemberik Khachatryan’s stone-built construction, the garage, is located on his neighbor’s, Arthur Khachatryan’s land. They had agreed on the construction long ago, now, I do not know what problems have arisen, the problems are in between them. We have nothing to do with it.”
The Court has mentioned in its legal estimate that the publication has been made available to the many thousands of people. “The content of the article evidently shows that the defendant did not refer to specific facts; in particular, there is no evidence that the “plaintiffs had illegally owned someone else’s property,” owned a stone building. According to another estimate of the court, defendants’ arguments are unsubstantiated. “The expressions made in the publication are addressed to the plaintiffs through “publicly expressed words; they are public expressions made to defame their honor, dignity and business reputation, which have no factual basis and are defamations.” The matter that the plaintiffs do not take advantage of the opportunity to resolve the dispute in extrajudicial manner is not so true, as initially it was not so necessary, because our media has given the chance to the plaintiffs to say and present their word during the preparation of the publication, and there was no restrictions. It is at least strange to deny something when the party had already denied in the publication.
Ruzan MINASYAN
