MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 9 “‘Judges [M.] and [L.L.] had been sitting on the cassette’, protests Olivier Morice, ‘and had forgotten to place it under seal, for over a month after the case was withdrawn from them’.” “To make matters worse, in the envelope Judge [P.] found a handwritten and rather friendly note.” “Mrs Borrel’s lawyers are obviously furious. ‘This letter shows the extent of the connivance between the Djibouti public prosecutor and the French judges’, exclaims Mr Morice, ‘and one cannot but find it outrageous’.” 38. In a judgment of 4 June 2002, the Nanterre Criminal Court dismissed the pleas of nullity which had been raised by the defendants, in particular on the basis of the immunity provided for by section 41 of the Freedom of the Press Act of 29 July 1881 on judicial proceedings and pleadings filed in court, on account of the fact that the article had merely reiterated the content of the letter to the Minister of Justice. The court took the view, on that point, that the letter in question was not an act of referral to the CSM and that its content had to be regarded as purely informative, with the result that it was not covered by immunity. 39. The court then observed that the defamatory nature of the comments had not been “meaningfully disputed” and that the applicant stood by the content of his allegations, which he considered to be well founded. Turning then to each of the impugned comments, to ascertain whether the charge of defamation was made out, and to assess the significance and seriousness thereof, the court first noted that “the accusation of impartiality [sic] and unfairness proffered against a judge clearly constitute[d] a particularly defamatory allegation, because it [was] tantamount to calling into question her qualities, her moral and professional rigour, and ultimately her capacity to discharge her duties as a judge”. It further took the view that the comments on the failure to forward the video-cassette were also defamatory as they suggested that there had at least been some negligence or a form of obstruction. As to the term “connivance”, the court found that the use of that word clearly and directly suggested that the judges had been collaborating with an official of a foreign country to act in a biased and unfair manner, this being exacerbated by the implication in the article that there was serious evidence of such conduct, because the Minister of Justice had been requested to initiate an investigation. 40. As to the applicant’s guilt, the court found that it was, in any event, established that the journalist had become privy to the letter sent to the Minister of Justice through his own sources and that he had sought confirmation and comments from the applicant, with whom he had had a telephone conversation. As the applicant had been aware that his statements to the journalist would be made public, the court took the view that he was therefore guilty of complicity in public defamation, unless the court were to accept his offer to prove the veracity of the allegations or his defence of good faith. However, the court dismissed the applicant’s various offers to