By Mark Dovich
CivilNet scored a major legal victory this month, with a court dismissing a libel suit brought against the outlet by a former hospital director who was the subject of an investigation into his apparent abuse of power.
Last Friday, an appeals court in Vanadzor, Armenia’s third largest city, upheld an earlier decision dismissing Stepan Mosinyan’s defamation case against CivilNet.
The lower court “made a justified decision with a comprehensive and objective examination and proper evaluation of all the evidence,” the court ruled.
“We were sure about the accuracy of our reporting, and we were certain there were no grounds to change the lower court’s decision,” said Karen Harutyunyan, CivilNet’s editor-in-chief, in reaction to the ruling.
At the same time, Harutyunyan acknowledged that this sort of litigation takes a lot of time and financial resources away from a news organization that is working to cover many other pressing issues across Armenia.
What’s the background?
Mosinyan, the former director of the Alaverdi Medical Center, sued CivilNet for defamation two years ago after the outlet’s Lori region correspondent, Larisa Paremuzyan, published an investigation uncovering his alleged abuse of power.
Paremuzyan had reported that Mosinyan, whose relatives held a substantial stake in the coffin business and parts of the funeral industry in the town of Alaverdi, was pressuring families of deceased patients at his hospital to use his relatives’ services.
Mosinyan, who has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, then took CivilNet to court, demanding the outlet retract the investigation and pay him nearly $7,500 in compensation.
When a lower court found that CivilNet’s investigation “cannot be considered defamatory” due to an “overriding public interest” in the reporting, Mosinyan challenged the ruling on appeal.
Under Armenian law, Mosinyan may appeal a second time, but he has so far not indicated publicly if he will do so.
In a separate development, just over a week before the appeals court’s decision, the newly appointed governor of the Lori region dismissed Mosinyan from his position.
