27/06/1958

OF CRIMINAL APPEAL (INFERIOR)

HARDING WILLIAM

THE POLICE vs GEORGE DUNFORD

N/A

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N/A

APPEAL - JUDGEMENT - LANGUAGE OF JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS - NULLITY

If two traffic cases, of which one is against an English-speaking person and one against a Maltese-speaking person, are ordered by the Court to be heard simultaneously, as is usually and properly donein traffic cases, it is quite in order for the Court of Magistrates to order that the proceedings be conducted in the Maltese language, saving the interpretation of the proceedings to the English-speaking defendant. In such a case, the judgment must be given in the Maltese language, and if it be given in the English language, this would constitute a substantial infringement of the provisions ofthe law governing the language of the proceedings. And as these provisions fall amongst those touching public order or public policy, that violation entails the nullity of the proceedings; so that, if the judgment is appealed from the Court of Appeal would quash that judgment and then proceed to hear and determine the case afresh in terms of the law. But if the English-speaking defendant draws his appeal application in the English language, that application is itself null. Although the Appellate Court, when the case came before it for hearing, the appellant being only one, and an English-speaking person, orders the proceedings to be conducted in the English language, that order was of necessity given after the filing of the application containing the appeal; but it was not lawful for the English-speaking defendant to bring on his appeal in English when, procedurally, until then the language of the proceedings was still the Maltese language. And here again, the violation of the language provision was a vital one, causing the nullity of the appeal itself. In consequence, the unfortunate position is that the judgment of the First Court was null and void owing to a substantial infringement of the language provisions, while the Appellate Court is unable to quash that judgment andhear the case afresh, because, owing to a substantial procedural defect there is legally no appealbefore it, and therefore it is not vested with the cognisance of the appeal.