DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil is ex­pect­ed to have the fi­nal say in a defama­tion law­suit brought by for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter and cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert against Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der.

Dur­ing a hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Maria Wil­son and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh grant­ed Alexan­der con­di­tion­al leave to ap­peal to the coun­try’s fi­nal ap­pel­late court.

In the ap­peal, Alexan­der is seek­ing to chal­lenge a de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal to side with a High Court judge who up­held Im­bert’s case and or­dered $525,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

The law­suit per­tained to Alexan­der’s posts on his Face­book page over sev­er­al hours be­tween Feb­ru­ary 29 and March 1, 2020.

Alexan­der es­sen­tial­ly al­leged that Im­bert had pur­chased an ex­ot­ic Swedish sports car for US$2 mil­lion by us­ing for­eign ex­change he ob­tained by cor­rupt means or by abus­ing his of­fice as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Im­bert de­nied any wrong­do­ing and filed the case, which was up­held by Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son in Oc­to­ber 2023.

In the judg­ment, Jus­tice Wil­son said Alexan­der’s state­ments did not meet the cri­te­ria of fair com­ment. She found Alexan­der failed to “es­tab­lish that the steps he had tak­en to gath­er and pub­lish the in­for­ma­tion were re­spon­si­ble and fair. “

“Al­though there is a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est in de­ter­min­ing that for­eign ex­change re­serves are dis­trib­uted in a fair and trans­par­ent man­ner, the de­fen­dant has failed to demon­strate that he took rea­son­able steps to ver­i­fy that the al­le­ga­tions made against the claimant were true,” she said.

“The tone of the pub­li­ca­tions was nei­ther mea­sured nor cir­cum­spect but may be la­belled as cav­a­lier or even dra­mat­ic,” she added.

Jus­tice Wil­son based the award of dam­ages on sev­er­al sim­i­lar judg­ments, in­clud­ing an­oth­er defama­tion case Alexan­der lost against busi­ness­man An­drew Gabriel.

Rul­ing on the ap­peal in Feb­ru­ary, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son found that Jus­tice Wil­son’s judg­ment could not be crit­i­cised.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed com­plaints from Alexan­der’s lawyer Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er over her fail­ure to in­di­vid­u­al­ly con­sid­er the se­ries of state­ments made by Alexan­der.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said there was com­pelling jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for deal­ing with the sev­en state­ments cu­mu­la­tive­ly. He point­ed out that the posts were made over a 24-hour pe­ri­od on the same medi­um and were re­lat­ed.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed and his col­leagues al­so agreed with their col­league’s as­sess­ment of the com­pen­sa­tion for Im­bert, which they stat­ed was not “in­or­di­nate­ly high”.

Im­bert was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas.