After the Special Investigative Service refused to subject MP Ruben Hayrapetyan to criminal responsibility, Hetq reporter Grisha Balasanyan went to the courts, demanding a public aplogy and one million AMD in compensation for being verbally abused.

Hayrapetyan had verbally abused the reporter during a phone interview, calling his “stupid”. Balasanyan called the MP back to find out the reason for the outburst. This time, when the MP was told that the conversation was being reported, he said he had done the right thing started to use sexual expletives against Balasanyan.

Both the First Court of Instance and the Appeals Court refused to accept the reporter’s case, arguing that, as legally defined, defamation is a publicly expressed statement.

Thus, given that the defamation was done via a telephone conversation, the courts state that they have no basis on which to act.

Let us skip over the arguments provided by the reporter’s lawyer, Vahe Grigoryan, as to why the court should have accepted the case and turn to another court case.

Last September, Marousya Danielyan informed the courts that her daughter, Arevik Asriyan, had been slandering and defaming her in the presence of relatives and other village residents in public for over one year.

Danielyan even submitted two affidavits by individuals attesting to the fact.

One of the individuals later changed her story, saying that she had signed the affidavit without reading the contents. It turns out that the other was the wife of the plaintiff’s brother and thus inclined to testify in favour of Danielyan.

In the cassation complaint, Gevorg Gevorgyan, Arevik’s lawyer, notes that: “Court material and other evidence substantiates that Arevik Asriyan only recounted stories about her mother three times and that she always made clear the source of the information – from various elder relatives.”

According to Article 1 of the RA Criminal Code, an individual is freed from responsibility if the information expressed by them is the literal repitiion or sincere paraphrasing of information publicly expressed by another and if reference is made to the sources when the information is disseminated.

The lawyer also noted that Arevik Asriyan told the stories during personal conversations with friends and not publicly in an open letter on the internet.

Thus, the lawyer argued, there is no defamation of character since there is a lack of premeditation to publicly defame a person as stipulated by the Armenian Civil Code.

Gevorg Gevorgyan also defended MP Ruben Hayrapetyan.

The judges weren’t swayed by his arguments in the Danielyan case involving average citizens as litigants.

The court found in favour of Arevik’s mother. The girl must make a written apology and pay 2 million AMD in compensation.

So why did they reverse their stance in the Balasanyan case?