Former police commissioner Gary Griffith has lost his defamation lawsuit against the Trinidad Express newspaper and three of its journalists over a series of reports on the issuing of Firearm User’s Licenses (FULs) during his tenure.
Delivering a judgment during a virtual hearing on Monday , Justice Jacqueline Wilson rejected Griffith’s claim in which he was alleging that the newspaper, its former investigative journalist Denyse Renne and reporter Rickie Ramdass, tarnished his professional reputation in a series of reports published in October 2020.
In deciding the case, Justice Wilson ruled that the articles were in the public interest as they involved a public official exercising his official decision-making discretion.
She also stated that the reports met the criteria for responsible journalism.
Dealing specifically with Renne’s investigative reports, Justice Wilson stated that they were responsible and fair.
“The first defendant relied on information from a confidential source she believed to be true and took material steps to verify including calling the claimant for a response,” Justice Wilson said.
Although Griffith’s lawyer Larry Lalla acknowledged that his client would be liable for the legal costs incurred by the newspaper in defending the lawsuit, Justice Wilson did not quantify the costs as the newspaper’s lawyer Farees Hosein requested that the parties file written submissions on the issue.
The challenged reports alleged that Griffith granted FULs to persons who had pending charges for possession of illegal firearms and to businessmen, whose spouses had made domestic violence allegations against them.
During the trial of the case in June last year, Griffith was interrogated over the allegations in Renne’s reports including claims that a businessman from south Trinidad was granted a provisional license despite having pending criminal charges and being investigated by several specialised police units.
Griffith repeatedly maintained that at the time he was not made aware of a report from a senior officer, in which he (the businessman) was refused a recommendation, and the provisional license was revoked as soon as he received it.
Griffith claimed that he could consider intelligence reports when considering applications but noted that he could not base his decision solely based on such.
“We cannot prevent based on hearsay and rumour. That person has a right to seek redress through the Firearms Appeal Board,” he said.
Griffith also claimed that he could not properly respond to the allegations before Renne’s reports were published as she did not reveal the details of the persons with the allegedly questionable FUL applications she referred to in her reports.
In her evidence, Renne maintained that she practised responsible journalism in her reports as she detailed the investigations she undertook into the information she claimed she received from confidential sources in the TTPS.
“The reason they (the applicants) were not identified is for them not to become criminal targets,” she said.
In his evidence, Ramdass claimed that he merely wrote a follow-up to Renne’s report using a press release on it, issued by the TTPS’s Corporate Communications Unit.
Last month, Griffith, who served as police commissioner between 2018 and 2021, scored a legal victory in his bid to prevent the report of an audit into the FULs issued by him and his predecessor Stephen Williams from being made public.
High Court Judge Devindra Rampersad partially upheld Griffith’s judicial review lawsuit against the National Security Council (NSC) led by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and the four retired police officers retained by it (the council) to conduct the probe into the issuing of FULs between 2016 and 2021.
Justice Rampersad said: “Having seen the report, the court is of the respectful view that it was prudent for the report to be withheld from the same forming part of public record in this matter at this time.”
While Justice Rampersad ruled that laying the executive summary of the report in Parliament, as previously proposed by Dr Rowley, was inappropriate, he ruled that it (the report) may be useful to the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the T&T Police Service (TTPS) as they are both currently conducting parallel investigations into the issue.
The outcome of the case was not a total success for Griffith as Justice Rampersad declined to invalidate the report over claims that the council was not empowered to initiate such a probe.
Justice Rampersad ruled that NSC was “quite” entitled to initiate the probe based on its far-ranging powers under Section 75 of the Constitution.