The businessman decided that the journalists had defamed him and launched criminal proceedings under article 212 of the Criminal Code.
The judge presiding over the case, Dorota Janek, critically assessed the newspaper’s publication. However, on 10 July 2013 she decided to dismiss the criminal proceedings against the defendants and set a two-year probation period, arguing that since they already lost a civil case related to the same article, a criminal conviction would put them in a double jeopardy situation. Still, the journalists have been ordered to pay PLN 1,000 as a contribution for a court-designated victim found and jointly and severally reimburse the businessman for his court costs (PLN 2,388).
In the verbal reasons given, the judge said that the journalists had not acted in the public interest and the reported transaction related to private dealings of the businessman who no longer acted in the capacity of a public servant.
As a result of the civil action brought by the businessman, which ended with a judgment affirming the journalists’ liability for the violation of his personal interests, the respondents published an apology in their own newspaper, “Tygodnik”.
The judgment is yet to become final.
The HFHR was observing the case as part of the programme the Observatory of the Freedom of Media in Poland.
The final hearing in the case and court’s pronouncement of the ruling was observed by Ewa Łosińska, an HFHR volunteer and the author of blog z województwa małopolskiego, a local monitoring blog under the heading of the project “Local monitoring of the freedom of media”.
