There are 60 petitions in the Armenian courts against information damaging honor, dignity, or business reputation. We are not talking about the petitions against mass media, but employer-employee, mother-daughter, commander-private, neighbor-neighbor etc.
The business reputation of an animal protection organization was discredited when an employee called a person of a higher rank “camel”. A cremator was offended when he was called “shaman”. The daughter of a 90-year-old woman called her “immoral” and she filed a petition in the court. We make these examples, thanks to one-month study of the legal cases in courts.
However, a case about honor and dignity was a reason for particular concerns. We are talking about a citizen’s letter. Susanna Hovhannisyan sent a letter to Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan on April 14. The citizen was convinced that the secrecy of correspondence was guaranteed by the Constitution. She referred to the activities of three high-ranking officers, she informed the Minister that one of those officers fired 35 workers who were in hard social condition, informed about another one that he had not worked in the system before, was discharged etc. We think after familiarizing himself with the letter the Minister could have summoned the citizen to his office at most for giving wrong information and “sharing concerns” would have been over by that. However, the letter fell into the hands of the people the woman was writing about.
The Kotayk district court (Judge Slavik Torosyan) ruled on the above-mentioned case about demand for compensation for damages to honor, dignity, and business reputation against Susanna Hovhannisyan. The case is under consideration of the Appellate Court and it has not been examined yet.
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Petitioners M.I., M.H. and A. K. informed in the petition that Susanna Hovhannisyan applied to Seyran Ohanyan, the Minister of Defense of theRepublicofArmenia, on April 13, publicly presenting such facts that in petitioners’ opinion, libeled them and didn’t correspond to the truth, furthermore damaged their honor, dignity and business reputation.
The law court ruled that the defendant libeled the petitioners and “while deciding on the amount of compensation, took into consideration the way of libeling the petitioners, the range of its spread, i.e. the libel was committed through correspondence with limited range of spread, only a few workers of the Defense Ministry knew about that.”
Taking into consideration the fact that the defendant and her son were not employed, the court ruled that the defendant should compensate the petitioners 20 thousand AMD each.
Susanna Hovhannisyan’s counselor said in the law court (by the way, an open court session was held and the letter was made public. We are aware of the content of that letter and considering the ranks of the officers, can declare it at every turn, since the mass media doesn’t bear responsibility for literally quoting the open session minutes – R.M.) that what the defendant had written was not made public and the court shouldn’t rule under the notorious regulations of the Civil Code of theRepublicofArmenia, i.e. Points 7 and 8of Article 1087.1. However, according to the court “libeling applications should not necessarily be published through mass media or other means accessible for many.”
The court forgot to recommend the citizens not to write letters to ministers that moment on, if they didn’t want to appear in the courtroom.
Ruzan Minasyan
