Former government minister John Rahael was yesterday awarded $250,000 in damages by the Court of Appeal against the Mirror newspaper for libel. But it was a reduced award, because the High Court had awarded him $400,000 three years ago.
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal comprising Justices Margot Warner, Wendell Kangaloo and Allan Mendonca disagreed with the award of the High Court. The court also awarded costs to Rahael. Rahael filed the writ against the Mirror for a story which was published on September 30, 2005. At a pre-trial review on July 19, 2006, the trial judge made an order for the exchange of witness statements. It was also directed that these statements were to be used as evidence-in-chief and that in default, no evidence of witnesses would be allowed. By the trial date, no party had complied with the order. The judge decided that the matter should proceed on the basis of the agreed statement of facts which had been filed by Rahael on May 5, 2006. That was all the evidence before the court, apart from the article which was admitted into evidence.
The judge concluded that the article was defamatory of the former minister and that he was entitled to general damages. Rahael was then awarded the sum of $400,000. The Mirror newspaper appealed, and among the grounds was that the judge erred in law when she admitted into evidence the article despite her earlier ruling that no evidence would be received in the matter owing to the failure of both sides to file witness statements. The newspaper contended that the effect of the ruling was that the article could not be tendered into evidence from the bar table except by consent, of which there was none.
In a 15-page judgment, Kangaloo said the only material ground of appeal concerned the challenge to the award of damages which the Mirror contended was excessive given that there was no evidence that Rahael suffered any damage. Kangaloo said the Court of Appeal would only be justified in reversing the judge on the award of damages if it was convinced that the judge acted upon some wrong principle of law, or that the amount awarded was so inordinately high as to make it an erroneous estimate of the damage to which Rahael was entitled.
Kangaloo said the award of $400,000 would have included a sum for injury to hurt feelings and distress associated with the libel when no evidence was led. He said the quantum of the award by the trial judge was difficult to maintain in light of her findings in relation to the impact of the publication on Rahael's reputation.
