Derek Achong

The Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­per has been or­dered to pay for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) pres­i­dent Ken Julien over $500,000 in dam­ages for a se­ries of li­belous ar­ti­cles re­lat­ed to his role at the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion.The pay­out, one of the high­est ever in a lo­cal defama­tion case, was or­dered by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad when he ruled in Julien's favour in the law­suit yes­ter­day.The main rea­son giv­en for the sub­stan­tial com­pen­sa­tion award was Julien's "high­ly dec­o­rat­ed and pub­li­cal­ly ac­claimed life and his­to­ry."

Ram­per­sad said: "It is high­ly prob­a­ble that the claimant and his fam­i­ly would have suf­fered hu­mil­i­a­tion and would have be­come the brunt of neg­a­tive re­marks and com­ment out of what was termed to be an "in­ves­tiga­tive" se­ries in one of the lead­ing dai­ly news­pa­pers in T&T which would have car­ried a high de­gree of weight in the mind of an or­di­nary per­son."

Julien is the re­cip­i­ent of the T&T's for­mer high­est award Trin­i­ty Cross (re­placed by the Or­der of T&T) for his role in na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment as well as the Cha­co­nia Gold for his con­tri­bu­tion to ed­u­ca­tion and pub­lic life.Be­sides the board of UTT, Julien has al­so served on sev­er­al oth­er State en­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (e-Teck). He was a se­nior lec­tur­er in elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, be­fore he re­tired in 1996.

The ar­ti­cles, pub­lished be­tween No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber 2006, were writ­ten by the news­pa­per's in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter Cami­ni Mara­jh and dealt main­ly with Julien's man­age­ment of UTT, his re­quire­ment to file de­c­la­ra­tions to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, mul­ti-mil­lion re­search deals be­tween UTT and in­ter­na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ties as well as al­le­ga­tions against Julien from his for­mer col­league at UTT, Ken­neth Fitz-An­drews.

In de­fence of the claim, the news­pa­per con­tend­ed the sto­ries were in the pub­lic's in­ter­est as UTT was a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed in­sti­tu­tion, a fact with which Ram­per­sad agreed.How­ev­er, he dis­agreed with the news­pa­per's main de­fence that the se­ries of ar­ti­cles were a prod­uct of re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism."To my mind, the first named de­fen­dant's (Mara­jh) mo­ti­va­tion seemed to be to get the prover­bial "scoop" from a dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ee rather than to pro­duce a bal­anced pro­fes­sion­al ar­ti­cle.

"This does not re­flect re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism but, rather what one might ex­pect from a sen­sa­tion­al­ist tabloid writer," Ram­per­sad said.He al­so took is­sue with the news­pa­per's fail­ure to ac­knowl­edge re­but­tal state­ments from a uni­ver­si­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive and from Julien's at­tor­ney be­fore it con­tin­ued pub­lish­ing fol­low-up ar­ti­cles on Julien and UTT.

Julien was rep­re­sent­ed by Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, and Stu­art Young and An­tho­ny Bul­lock. Se­nior Coun­sel Christo­pher Hamel-Smith and at­tor­neys Faa­rees Ho­sein and Car­olyn Ramjohn-Ho­sein rep­re­sent­ed the news­pa­per and its re­porter.