Former Deputies may be discharged from bankruptcy – but not in time for election

Former Deputies may be discharged from bankruptcy – but not in time for election

The couple were declared en désastre in 2014 after they brought and lost a libel action against the JEP and Broadlands estate agency claiming that a satirical cartoon published as part of an advertisement was defamatory.

The Viscount has said that he intends to make a representation to the Royal Court on Friday regarding the Pitmans being discharged from désastre.

If they are discharged, they would not, however, be free to seek re-election at the general election in May.

Under Island law, creditors have four years to seek to recover their debts from those declared en désastre after which time the debt is extinguished. Bankrupts are barred from sitting in the States for five years.

The Pitmans lost their case before the Royal Court in April 2013 and were denied leave to appeal against the decision by the Jersey Court of Appeal. They had failed to meet the deadline to launch the appeal and were unable to convince the court that they had exceptional reasons to be granted leave after the deadline had expired. They had claimed that they were the victims of a corrupt legal system.

Mr and Mrs Pitman said that they faced having to pay their own legal bills totalling £250,000 after losing the case and were forced to sell their St John home.

However, neither the JEP nor Broadlands have received a penny from the couple despite the two respondents in the case being awarded their costs by both the Royal Court and the Court of Appeal. The JEP’s legal costs exceeded £170,000.

Mr and Mrs Pitman had sought £15,000 each in damages after claiming that the cartoon, which had been commissioned by Broadlands for an advertisement published in the JEP on Christmas Eve 2008, had harmed their reputations as politicians.

Among other satirical depictions of topical events from 2008, the cartoon featured Mr and Mrs Pitman looking at each other and smiling behind an election rosette adorned with pound notes. The cartoon was completed with a caption which read: ‘4 X the salary darling!’

The Pitmans said that the cartoon was defamatory in its plain and ordinary meaning, which they said was that they were greedy money-grabbers, and by way of innuendo, because, they claimed, it made them out to be liars because it suggested that they had stood for financial gain and not for social justice, as they had told their constituents.

However, Jurats Le Breton and Milner, who were sitting with Commissioner Sir Charles Gray, a former UK High Court judge and libel specialist, rejected their claims less than 90 minutes after retiring to consider the evidence.

It was the Jurats’ role to decide what the meaning of the cartoon was and whether that meaning was defamatory.

Announcing the court’s decision, Sir Charles said that the court was ‘not persuaded that the words were defamatory either in their natural meaning or by innuendo’.

They added that the claim also did not meet the required ‘threshold of seriousness’ to succeed.

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