Supreme Court upholds retraction order over theatre director claims

Latvia’s Supreme Court has refused to initiate cassation proceedings in a case over false and reputation-damaging statements attributed to Dailes Theatre director Juris Žagars, LSM reported. The decision leaves in force a Riga Regional Court ruling ordering the defendant to publicly retract the statements.

Žagars had sued Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs, a state-owned public media company, over allegedly offensive remarks broadcast on Latvian Television’s Kultūršoks programme in a segment titled “Aktieris uz laiku?” He said the remarks concerned his colleagues and their employment contract terms.

Žagars denied making the statements and argued that publishing them, based on an unrecorded conversation with a journalist, damaged his honour and dignity. He also said the refusal to retract the information had created a false impression of the cultural sector.

Riga City Court initially upheld the claim in full, ordering the information to be retracted and awarding Žagars one euro in symbolic compensation for moral harm.

After an appeal, Riga Regional Court found that the disputed statement constituted a factual claim rather than the journalist’s subjective opinion. It said the claim could therefore be checked to establish whether Žagars had actually made the statement.

The appellate court found that the programme had presented Žagars’s alleged remarks based on the journalist’s original written notes, whose accuracy could not be verified. As the defendant had failed to prove that the information was true, the court ordered its retraction, concluding that publication had violated good journalistic practices, misled the public and harmed Žagars’s reputation and standing as an actor and theatre director.

However, the court rejected the claim for moral damages, finding that the requested amount was formal and unsupported by evidence.