Narek Samsonyan Wins Court Case Against Shushan Pashinyan, Daughter of Nikol Pashinyan

The president of the Civic Awareness NGO and political scientist Narek Samsonyan has won a court case against Shushan Pashinyan, the middle daughter of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. This was reported by Antifake.am.

The court of general jurisdiction of Yerevan, presided over by Judge Zaruhi Nakhshkaryan, rejected Shushan Pashinyan's lawsuit against Narek Samsonyan on June 18.

Shushan Pashinyan had filed a lawsuit against Narek Samsonyan concerning a Facebook post related to his well-known commentary on "caviar," claiming that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan buys black caviar for his daughter at a restaurant in Yerevan for $3,000 a month. She demanded that Narek Samsonyan, head of the Civic Awareness NGO, refute what she considered defamatory information and compensate her with 2 million drams for the damage to her honor and dignity.

The court noted that the expressions presented by the plaintiff, as a minor, are actually insinuations about the increase in the Prime Minister's income since taking office, and do not personally concern the plaintiff, minor Shushan Pashinyan. In other words, the mandatory condition recognized by the European Court is absent in this case since the post made on the defendant's Facebook page on January 26, 2020, was not directly addressed to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff was not the target of the criticism.

Thus, the court established that the plaintiff had failed to substantiate before the court that the subject of the criticized material was indeed the plaintiff, and the factual data present in the texts does not tarnish or degrade the personal honor and dignity of the plaintiff. This indicates that the fourth mandatory condition stipulated by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Armenia and the European Court regarding defamation is absent; that is, "the presented factual data must actually tarnish the honor, dignity, or business reputation of the plaintiff," and therefore the case of defamation is absent, leading to the dismissal of the lawsuit.