LEGALWORKS’ NEWS HIGHLIGHT

In the past Friday, February 15th, the court sentence regarding the lawsuit that opposed Dr. Pedro Santana Lopes to the Impala Group and other journalists was delivered.

The sentence ordered the media group and the concerned journalists to pay a compensation, for moral and economic damages, in the value of € 730.000,00, which constitutes a decision that assumes unparalleled relevance in the history of our judicial system.

The lawsuit concerned a group of articles published by different periodicals of the Impala Group, being concluded, by the Court, that the facts described were untrue, and therefore, “unequivocally prejudice the good name and the reputation of the author, particularly since he was, at the time, the Prime Minister of Portugal, besides being a known person, given the public functions carried out.”

As stated by ANDREA CAMPOS, partner and lawyer responsible for the Litigation Department of LEGALWORKS, about a similar lawsuit that opposed the then Prime Minister to another media group, who recalls, also on this case:

“These lawsuits have, as a corner stone, the idea that freedom of press cannot (and should not) be used to provide false information or to produce images that, without any correspondence with the truth, affect the good name, the dignity and the image of a citizen who wishes to have an active role in the public life”.

LEGALWORKS, particularly the lawyers ANDREA CAMPOS and DIANA CASTRO DA MATA, who assumed the direction and the leading of the lawsuit against the Impala Group and the Directors of its periodicals, express satisfaction for the result obtained, in a complex and demanding lawsuit, proposed in 2007 and which judgement, with several hearings, took about 1 (one) year, and regarding which they have no doubts when affirm that justice was made:

“There are moments when the writings of some actually affect the life of people who dedicate themselves to the public cause. This is the present case”.

Here's the news about this topic in DIÁRIO DE NOTÍCIAS and ADVOCATUS.