“Hraparak” daily received the ruling of RA Court of Cassation on the case of lawyer Artur Grigorian versus “Hraparak” founder, “Hraparak Oratert” LLC. As it has been reported, Artur Grigorian had contested at court of general jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash administrative districts of Yerevan the readers comments to the “Hraparak” article, “Citizens, Are They Victims of Disloyal Advocates?”, published on August 10, 2011 and stored on www.hraparak.am. In the readers’ comments Artur Grigorian had counted six wordings that discredited his honor and dignity, and evaluated the moral damage for each of them by 3 million AMD. Thus, the overall amount of financial claims to the newspaper made 18 mln AMD (about $ 47,000). On March 7, 2012 court of general jurisdiction revoked the suit as unjustified, obliging to extract from Artur Grigorian the state duty of 360,000 AMD – in proportion to the financial claims. The ruling, particularly, stressed that “Hraparak” had no intentions to slander and insult Artur Grigorian; the readers had left the comments on the website, moreover they were deleted upon the plaintiff’s demand (see details in YPC Weekly Newsletter, March 2-8, 2012). On April 5, 2012 the lawyer contested the ruling at RA Civil Court of Appeal. On April 16, the appeal was revoked. On May 3, Artur Grigorian addressed to the RA Court of Cassation.
On June 6 the Court of Cassation upheld the ruling of the second court jurisdiction.
