Tovmasian filed the lawsuit two years ago during a standoff with Pashinian.
The latter alleged at the time that Tovmasian “offered his services” and cozied up to him following the 2018 “Velvet Revolution.” He said he rebuffed those overtures because he did not want to cooperate with “representatives of the corrupt former regime.” Tovmasian denied the claim as untrue and slanderous.
A court in Yerevan on Thursday ordered Pashinian to refute the claim. But it also refused to declare slanderous Pashinian’s 2020 allegation that Tovmasian had “occupied the Constitutional Court as a result of fraud.”
Pashinian’s lawyer, Gevorg Gyozalian, said his client will appeal against the ruling. “Obviously, we don’t think that was defamation,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Later in 2020, Pashinian and his political team succeeded in significantly changing the composition of the Constitutional Court through constitutional amendments controversially passed by the Armenian parliament.
The amendments called for the gradual resignation of seven of the court’s nine justices, who were at odds with the government. Three of them had to resign with immediate effect. The amendments also required Tovmasian to quit as court chairman but remain a judge.
Tovmasian and the ousted judges consider their removal illegal and politically motivated. They asked the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to have them reinstated. The Strasbourg-based court has still not ruled on their appeal.
In January 2021, Pashinian lost a court battle with Gagik Khachatrian, a former finance minister arrested and prosecuted on corruption charges. A Yerevan court ordered Pashinian to apologize for his press secretary’s claim that Khachatrian and his two sons had “headed a corrupt mafia system.”
The court also ruled that Pashinian’s office must pay 508,000 drams (over $1,000) in damages to cover the plaintiffs’ legal expenses. The office appealed that verdict.
Pashinian is currently also facing defamation lawsuits filed by about a dozen other individuals, including former President Robert Kocharian.