Yvonne Ba­boolal

There has, so far, nev­er been an on­line defama­tion case in T&T. But there could be a first, says Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard SC, a vic­tim of the of­fence. There are sev­er­al li­bel­lous post­ings on a Face­book page crit­i­cis­ing Gas­pard for clear­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his one-time spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er Ju­liana Pe­na of any "crim­i­nal mis­con­duct" in the con­struc­tion of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar church–the Light­house of Our Lord Je­sus Christ–in the Heights of Gua­napo, off Ari­ma.

The gen­er­al call on the Face­book page is that Gas­pard must go. It is be­ing charged that pol­i­tics was be­hind the free­ing of Man­ning and Pe­na. Con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, Gas­pard said he has not seen the com­ments be­cause he does not look at blog­gers. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that his un­der­stand­ing is that on­line defama­tion is "ac­tion­able". Promis­ing he will look at the com­ments, Gas­pard said: "There has been no on­line defama­tion case lo­cal­ly.

But there could be a first. "I was dis­cussing the sub­ject with oth­er peo­ple and will be ad­vised ac­cord­ing­ly." At­tor­ney David West said he had a case re­cent­ly in which one of the par­ties con­tend­ed that blogs against him were defam­a­to­ry. "We set­tled but the blogs in­creased the cost of the dam­ages," West said. He said there have been cas­es in the UK in­volv­ing on­line defama­tion.

Un­der com­mon law, some­one in T&T can be sued for on­line defama­tion, he added. "It's even worse de­fam­ing some­one on­line be­cause it is read by a much wider au­di­ence." Kei­th Scot­land, an­oth­er at­tor­ney, said the on­line phe­nom­e­non is new and the area of defama­tion re­mains un­set­tled. The DPP is en­ti­tled to pro­tect his good name, though, and if the cri­te­ria is met for a defam­a­to­ry suit, he is cer­tain Gas­pard will be ad­vised on what ac­tion he could take, he said. "I am sure he will take the ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal ad­vice and act ac­cord­ing­ly.

I see no rea­son why he can't sue. He will know who he has to con­tend with," Scot­land not­ed, re­fer­ring to those whose names ap­pear on the post­ings. Gas­pard, in a re­cent sev­en-page press re­lease, made the dis­clo­sure that no crim­i­nal mis­con­duct has been found against Man­ning and Pe­na. He said if any new ev­i­dence is brought to his at­ten­tion, he will re­vis­it the mat­ter.