have clearly been on the rise since the town's police department (timber purchasing quota of 4,500 cubic metres) and the courts' management department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (timber purchasing quota of 3,000 cubic metres) became the forest operators."
The quotation was bold-faced and the source was clearly identified. The letter had been signed by seventeen individuals, including the head of the Dalnerechensk municipal council and his first deputy, the deputy head of the town police, the deputy head of the local department of the Federal Security Service, the deputy head of the tax police, a senior State tax inspector, the deputy head of the department for environmental resources, two directors of regional forest operators, and others. The letter had been sent on behalf of the Dalnerechensk municipal council to the Presidential Envoy in the Far Eastern Federal Region and also made public at a press-conference held on the premises of the Press Development Institute.
10. On 28 March 2002 the courts' management department of the Primorskiy Region (Управление судебного департамента при Верховном суде РФ в Приморском крае) brought a civil action against the applicants - as the founders of the newspaper - for the protection of its professional reputation and compensation for non-pecuniary damage. They submitted that the impugned extract had impaired the professional reputation of the department and undermined the authority of the courts' management department of the Primorskiy Region and that of the judicial system as a whole.
B. Publication of a refutation and Mr Shulga's
defamation action
11. Following the institution of the civil action, the applicants printed the letter in full in issue No. 17 of the newspaper, dated 25 April - 1 May 2002, under the headline "Ghost Companies and Courts' Management Department at Timber Yards" ("Фирмы-призраки и Управление судебного департамента на лесозаготовках"). The letter was followed by an editor's note under the headline "It was not about you. Refutation" ("Вас тут не стояло. Опровержение"). The note emphasised that the quoted letter did not specify which courts' management department had purchased timber. It went on as follows:
"It is certainly easier for the head of the Department, Mr V.A. Shulga, who lodged the [defamation] action, to tell who[se department], in addition to its principal functions, has been a forest operator and whose professional reputation has been impaired when a newspaper brought this fact into the limelight...
This is why the editor's office decided not to wait for a court decision and considered it necessary to refute conjectures that readers might have made about the Department of the Primorskiy Region. Having regard to potential adverse consequences of the publication, we officially announce -
THAT WE DID NOT MEAN THE COURTS' MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT OF THE PRIMORSKIY REGION."
12. On an unspecified date Mr Shulga, the director of the courts' management department of the Primorskiy Region, filed a civil action, in his personal capacity, for the protection of his honour, dignity and professional reputation and compensation for non-pecuniary damage. He alleged that the refutation had not been valid because it had been clear for a reasonable reader that his department had been targeted in the publication. He contended that he was personally responsible for his department and that the publication had caused substantial non-pecuniary damage to his reputation.
C. Judgments in Mr Shulga's defamation action
13. On 14 June 2002 the Arsenyev Town Court of the Primorskiy Region granted Mr Shulga's action against the applicants. The court found that the publication had targeted Mr Shulga's department because it had been the only court
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