Derek Achong

Reign­ing Road March cham­pi­on Machel Mon­tano is su­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) for ter­mi­nat­ing its spon­sor­ship deal with him.

In his filed law­suit, Mon­tano is seek­ing dam­ages from TSTT for can­celling his con­tract af­ter he was con­vict­ed in 2012 for as­sault­ing four peo­ple at the Zen Night­club, Port-of-Spain.

He is con­tend­ing the com­pa­ny, of which the Gov­ern­ment is the 51 per cent ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, can­celled the con­tract with­out giv­ing him a rea­son.

Through the law­suit Mon­tano is seek­ing to re­cov­er the funds he would have earned for the re­main­der of the three-year con­tract.

The case came up for hear­ing for the first time yes­ter­day be­fore Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo in the Port-of-Spain High Court but was ad­journed for a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence in June.

Mon­tano, fel­low so­ca artistes Ker­nal Roberts, Rod­ney "Ben­jai" LeBlanc and Joel "Zan" Feveck were found guilty of as­sault­ing the four friends at the night­club on April 27, 2006.

Mon­tano was or­dered to pay $13,700 in fines and $13,500 in com­pen­sa­tion to the vic­tims–Rus­sel Pol­lon­ais, Blan­dis Brown, Janelle Lee Chee and Ger­ard Bowrin.

In Jan­u­ary, Mon­tano signed a con­tract to be a brand am­bas­sador with TSTT's ri­val Dig­i­cel. Mon­tano is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Lar­ry Williams and Jacque­line Chang.