Summary eviction before the Rent Board needs no witness list

The Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction), Judge Lawrence Mintoff presiding, decided Fal-Con Limited vs D.M. on 1 July 2026. A landlord had begun summary eviction proceedings before the Rent Regulation Board under article 16A of Chapter 69, and the tenants objected that the sworn application carried no list of witnesses, so the landlord's evidence should be declared closed.

The court held that the formalities of a sworn application under the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure do not apply before the Board, and dismissed the appeal.

The facts

Fal-Con Limited owns a yard in Paola, which it let to D.M. and i360 Solutions Limited by a private writing of 15 July 2021. It terminated the lease, alleging a sublease to T4B Services Limited without its consent, structures built without permit and extraordinary alterations, and when the tenants stayed on it applied to the Board under article 16A for their eviction and for €40,000, the cost of removing the structures.

The Board found that the tenants had a prima facie defence and allowed them to reply. Besides contesting the merits, the tenants raised two preliminary points: the application had not been confirmed on oath by a representative of the company, and it carried no list of witnesses as article 156(4) of Chapter 12 requires, so the company should be treated as having no evidence to bring. On 30 September 2025 the Board rejected the second point in a partial judgment.

D.M. and i360 Solutions Limited appealed on four grounds.

What the court held

The first ground said the Board had wrongly distinguished the sworn application of Chapter 12 from that of article 16A of Chapter 69, when the law uses identical words. The court began by noting that the application had in fact not been confirmed on oath by the company's representative, and that the Board had thought no such oath needed. It did not go that far, but it did agree with the Board on the main point.

Chapter 12 regulates how a sworn application must be drawn up to be valid; Chapter 69 is the special law that governs procedure before the Board. Article 16A speaks of a sworn application, but nowhere sets out what formalities it must contain. Because the procedure is summary and its consequences for the tenant can be severe, the legislator wanted the application sworn, so that eviction is never treated lightly.

That is as far as the requirement goes. The court refused to hold that an application not sworn in the manner of article 156 of Chapter 12 attracts the nullity of article 789 of that Code: the Board's application does not even carry the heading that requires a sworn reply within twenty days, because the procedure runs under a special law before a special board.

On the second ground the court was brief: "ladarba l-liġi speċjali li tirregola l-proċedura quddiem il-Bord ma titlobx għal ċerti formalitajiet biex tali proċedura titqies li hija valida, m'għandha tinħoloq l-ebda assunzjoni li dawn il-formalitajiet huma meħtieġa" (once the special law that regulates procedure before the Board does not call for certain formalities for that procedure to be valid, no assumption should arise that those formalities are required).

On the third, the summary procedure is designed to be decided at the first hearing without witnesses; when the summary character is successfully contested, as here, the applicant cannot be treated as having forfeited the right to produce witnesses, because it could not know in advance that the other side would be allowed to plead. The fourth ground, resting on the bar in article 156(7) of Chapter 12 against hearing witnesses not listed with the application, fell with the rest.

The Board had already distinguished a Court of Appeal judgment of 26 October 2022 as a case about the superior courts where article 156 applies in terms, and had pointed out that article 167(3) of Chapter 12, which governs summary procedure in those courts, itself omits article 156(4). The appeal was dismissed with the costs of both instances against the appellants.

Why it matters

A landlord filing under article 16A needs the oath and the sworn declaration of facts the article itself demands, not a Chapter 12 witness list, and losing the summary track does not lose him his witnesses. The tenant's objection that no witnesses were listed is now closed before the Board. The court's remark that even the missing oath did not produce nullity should not be relied on: have the application sworn by a representative of the company.

Where it sits

The case is an application of lex specialis derogat generali to procedure. Article 16A of Chapter 69 created a summary eviction track before the Board, modelled on but not identical to the summary procedure of article 167 of Chapter 12; the sworn application of articles 154 to 159 of Chapter 12, with its witness list under article 156(4) and its nullity sanction under article 789, belongs to the ordinary procedure of the superior courts.

The Court of Appeal decided on the articles alone. The only judgment named is one of the Court of Appeal of 26 October 2022, cited by the appellants and distinguished by the Board as a decision on the superior courts' own rules.

Source

Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction), Appeal 4/2025/1, 1 July 2026: 4/2025/1