Vilen Gaifejian

The Decision of the RA Court of Cassation on the Case of SOS TV Program

On October 13 of 2017, the RA Court of Appeals made a decision to reject the appeal submitted by Haykuhi Harutyunyan, the President of the “Protection of Right without Borders” NGO, Advocate of Vilen Gaifejian, “SOS” TV program host.

According to the Court, the facts mentioned in the appeal are not sufficient to consider the existence of the judicial error justified and have it’s have possible influence on the exit of the case.

The violations regarding the material and right to judiciary made by the lower courts were presented in the appeal. Particularly, as stated by the plaintiff, the lower courts made the following errors:

The courts decide to bring to liability the TV host not for his author’s speech, but for the speech of the script authors:

abstract expressions attributed to concrete people,

presenting of the expression with at least with 3 different meaning by subjective interpretation as an insult.

Moreover, the RA Civil Court of Appeal did not take into consideration the circumstance that the nature of expressions, evaluated as insulting, were not presented before the court: no explanation was provided in this regard and the RA Civil Court of Appeal did not refer to those expressions at all.

RA Civil Court of Appeal ignored the circumstance that the first instance court, exceeding its scope of authorities, took the responsibility of proofing this fact instead of plaintiff and considered that the mentioned expressions related to the plaintiff.

It should be mentioned that Haykuhi Harutyunyan , Advocate of Vilen Gaifejian, “SOS” program host applied to RA Civil Court of Appeal to appeal the court decision N EAQD/2551/02/15 in regard to the satisfaction of the claim submitted by the Police representatives Arthur Madatyan and Sergey Zakaryan, on the grounds of demanding public apologize as well as on the violation of material and judicial law.

The Court of General Jurisdiction of Arabkir and Kanaqer-Zeytun Administrative Districts of Yerevan rejected the appeal, considering that the Court has comprehensively, thoroughly and objectively examined and adequately evaluated all the evidence available in the case. The Court of Appeals came to the conclusion that, Vilen Gaifejian had an intention to humiliate the authorities of Arthur Madatyan and Zakaryan with his expressions and the video was disseminated with the purpose to discredit the police officers and offend their honor and dignity. It should be noted, that on June 1 of 2015 the Republic of Armenia namely RA Police servicemen Arthur Rafik Madatyan and Sergey Seryozha Zakaryan submitted a lawsuit against the host of “SOS” internet grogram Vilen Gaifejian on the demand to subject the latter to civil liability for publically expressing insulting words during the 11^th edition of his program.

During the argumentation, a reference was also made to the case near the presidential residence between the police and the mothers of the soldiers killed in peaceful conditions in the army.