Kerala High Court Dismisses Contempt Petition Against Businessman Kochouseph Chittilappilly

The Division Bench of Dr. Justice A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar and Justice Mohammed Nias C.P. set aside the Advocate General's order granting sanction to initiate contempt proceedings against Chitillapilly.

The allegation was that Chitillappilly submitted a complaint before the Chief Justice regarding certain oral remarks made by a Single Bench which was considering a compensation case (W.P.(C) No.1107/2007) preferred by a person injured at Chitillappilly's amusement park, Veegaland (Wonderla).

He had stated that several newspapers - Deshabhimani, The Times of India, Marunadan Malayali, The News Minute, Newsrupt, Asianet News and Mangalam TV – had reported the oral remarks. He then approached the Chief Justice for a determination as to whether such remarks were necessary while considering the case.

Following this, Advocate S. Aswakumar preferred a sanction petition before the Advocate General for initiating contempt proceedings against Chittilappilly. In 2019, AG granted sanction after finding that Chittilappilly was neither present during the hearing nor had verified the newspaper reports before complaining before the Chief Justice. It was opined that the complaint was made to publicize Chittilappilly's own charitable endowments and to lower the dignity of the Court. The AG also relied on an affidavit sworn by the counsel of the writ petitioner, who affirmed that he had not heard the judge making such remarks.

Hovever, the Division Bench found that sanction was granted without impleading the authors of the newspaper reports and was based on a factually incorrect foundation. It, thus, set aside the sanction.

The Bench also remarked that media personnel must be circumspect while reporting oral observations by a judge since it could be taken out of context and distorted. It added:

“Unlike a judgment or a recorded order, an oral remark made is not a considered finding and forms no part of the judicial record. A report that presents such a remark as the Court's conclusion, without context or verification, therefore carries an inherent risk of distortion. Once published, such a report acquires a currency and permanence of its own, is picked up and repeated by other sources, and causes reputational injury to the individual named that cannot be undone by a subsequent clarification or contradiction, which rarely reaches the same audience with the same prominence.”

It was also observed that with the freedom to report judicial proceedings, there exists a corresponding obligation to verify what is reported:

“The freedom to report judicial proceedings, which is a valuable facet of open justice, is accompanied by a corresponding obligation to verify what is reported, particularly where the remark concerns the character or conduct of a named individual, and to reproduce it with fidelity to what was actually said and in the context in which it was said. A report founded on hearsay or on another publication, without independent verification from those present in Court, falls short of this obligation and, as this very case illustrates, can itself become the trigger for proceedings, including contempt proceedings that are traceable not to anything the Court said, but to what was inaccurately reported that it said.”

Judges must exercise restraint in oral remarks

In the judgment, the Court also touched upon the importance of Judges exercising restraint while making oral remarks:

“An observation that is not necessary for the adjudication of the issue at hand, that is unsupported by the pleadings or the material on record, or that is capable of causing harm to the reputation of a party or a non- party, ought not to be made, however tempting the occasion. It is a settled and salutary principle that a Judge speaks, and ought to speak, only through the judgment or order that he pronounces and that alone is his authorised and accountable voice, rendered upon a considered appraisal of the pleadings, the evidence and the law. An oral observation made across the Bench enjoys no such discipline, is amenable to no correction in appeal and yet, once uttered, is capable of inflicting an injury as real, and at times more enduring, than anything contained in the judgment itself.”

The Court emphasized that the ethical code applicable to judges require not just avoidance of actual impropriety but even the appearance of it in, even in personal activities. It added that higher the position of the judge, the greater is this responsibility.

“The standard demanded is, in substance, ascetic: a Judge is expected to renounce, in the exercise of judicial office, precisely those things that ordinary public life offers in abundance, viz. attention, applause and publicity, and to conduct himself with a detachment not unlike that demanded of one who has embraced a life of self-abnegation. Seen against this standard, any tendency on the part of a Judge to make oral observations calculated, or even merely likely, to attract media attention and public notice is difficult to reconcile with the spirit of that code. Such a tendency substitutes the sobriety and accountability of the judgment for the transient and unaccountable currency of a headline, and to that extent it is inimical to the very ethic of restraint and self- effacement that judicial office demands.”

“In the present age of live-streaming and instantaneous digital reporting, an observation made in the course of a hearing no longer remains confined to the courtroom or to the memory of those present but it travels instantly and irreversibly beyond it, is capable of being isolated from its context, and, once carried in the press, acquires a life that the Judge himself can neither recall nor control… Accurate and verified reporting by the media, on the one hand, and disciplined restraint by the judiciary in respect of observations not necessary for adjudication, on the other, are thus complementary obligations, each reinforcing the other in preserving the dignity of the Court and the reputational interests of those who appear before it,” it further remarked.