AGIP Responds to the 'Misconstrued Truth' of Saba's Interpretation of Cyprus Supreme Court Ruling
02 Sep 2007 AMMAN --- August 26, 2007------ Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP), a leading global intellectual property firm, would like to clarify the facts related to the defamation case brought by AGIP (known before as TMP Agents) against Saba & Co.. A recent judgment by the Supreme Court of Cyprus has been already issued on this case.
The case dates back to May 30, 1988, when Saba sent letters to various organizations, companies and individuals claiming that AGIP does not protect substantially the interests of its clients. On April 16, 2007, the Supreme Court of Cyprus issued a decision in favor of AGIP and ordered Saba and/or their representatives to cease publishing and/or sending similar letters and/or statements and/or otherwise, defaming AGIP.
In an article published on SABA’s website on June 18, 2007, Saba has taken statements from the Court’s judgment out of context and placed them accordingly alongside their own commentary to insinuate the same defamatory it made against AGIP initially, violating the Supreme Court’s order that was issued against them.
While Saba has assured the credibility of witnesses in their article, they did not defined how the Court has used this term. The Court explained that credibility is pertaining to the issue of proof of damages in connection with the sending of the defamatory letter, and not credibility in the ordinary sense.
Where Saba has mentioned malicious falsehood, they have not isolated the two terms, and whilst malice was not proved, their final comment was defamatory and that is because it was based on their own conclusions and not facts, leaving the comment to be false. The other facts were not defamatory in the sense that they only described the events which occurred. Despite the fact that Saba has claimed that such facts were true, this did not influence the final decision of the Court of Appeal since Saba’s conclusive comments regarding the events which took place were found to be defamatory.
Saba went further and violated the Court’s order, they mentioned in their article that the entire contents of the letter they sent were factual but the Court ignored this and ruled that the letter, indeed, included a fundamental defamatory conclusion.
Even as the defamatory letter could have caused devastating damages, AGIP still had a rise in profits from one of their clients and this had to be taken into consideration by the Court pertaining to the credibility of the submission made by AGIP regarding loss of profits. However and contrary to Saba’s spin on this, it is clear evidence of AGIP’s credibility and their clients’ confidence in their services. Accordingly, AGIP was able to surmount the defamatory letter because of their solid reputation in offering clients the best services and protection of their rights.
Finally, Saba mentioned that AGIP won strictly on a legal issue relating to public interest. In this regard, AGIP wants to highlight that Saba was not able to fulfill the requirements of defense for having published defamatory letters. The two requirements are “justification” and “fair comment”. The justification defense was not met because it concerns only statements of fact and not comments. It is only the “fair comment” defense that has the element of “public interest”, this matter only concerned the clients who received the defamatory letter and the two parties to the litigation, and so this defense is not applicable to Saba in the first place. AGIP won because Saba's defamatory comments were not based on facts but on their own presumptions.
AGIP will be taking further legal actions against SABA because of their violation of the Court’s order.
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