Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal has resched­uled the hear­ing in the mat­ter in­volv­ing Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der and Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day, af­ter an ob­jec­tion was raised to the pro­ceed­ings be­ing livestreamed.

Alexan­der, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP), ap­pealed a 2023 rul­ing by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, which or­dered him to pay Pan­day $850,000 in dam­ages for defama­tion.

The Ju­di­cia­ry had in­di­cat­ed that yes­ter­day’s hear­ing would be livestreamed on its YouTube plat­form.

In a sub­se­quent up­date, the Ju­di­cia­ry stat­ed that an ob­jec­tion had been raised to the livestream­ing, which was be­ing con­sid­ered by the court, and that there would be no live stream­ing of the pro­ceed­ings.

The Ju­di­cia­ry lat­er is­sued an­oth­er up­date stat­ing that the mat­ter had been resched­uled to De­cem­ber 17.

The ob­jec­tion was raised by Alexan­der’s at­tor­neys.

In a brief com­ment when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Pan­day said she had no prob­lem with the pro­ceed­ings be­ing live-streamed.

“As an at­tor­ney at law, I con­tin­ue to sup­port the Ju­di­cia­ry’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment, as stat­ed on its web­site last week, to im­prov­ing pub­lic ac­cess to jus­tice, pro­mot­ing trans­paren­cy and en­hanc­ing pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of the ju­di­cial process.”

Pan­day had sued Alexan­der based on a live video post­ed on Alexan­der’s per­son­al Face­book page and an­oth­er page as­so­ci­at­ed with the PEP on Ju­ly 17, 2020.

In the video, Alexan­der com­ment­ed on Pan­day’s par­ty re­vers­ing its de­ci­sion to con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad up­held Pan­day’s defama­tion claim, rul­ing that Alexan­der’s com­ments were defam­a­to­ry.

He said the court was of the “re­spect­ful view” that the state­ment was ma­li­cious and “de­signed to sen­sa­tion­alise an ob­vi­ous un­truth that was fab­ri­cat­ed for per­son­al po­lit­i­cal gain and to den­i­grate and dis­par­age the claimant.”

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so found that Alexan­der’s state­ment did not qual­i­fy as re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism, as claimed.

“There was no source of the in­for­ma­tion that was giv­en in the video nor did it seem that there were any steps what­so­ev­er tak­en to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Alexan­der was or­dered to pay $600,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $250,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages.

The court said its as­sess­ment took in­to ac­count Pan­day’s fam­i­ly name, which she in­her­it­ed from her fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, as well as her un­blem­ished per­son­al rep­u­ta­tion as an at­tor­ney and politi­cian.

Alexan­der was al­so or­dered to pay $97,750 in le­gal costs for the law­suit.

In the mat­ter, Pan­day was rep­re­sent­ed by Justin Phelps SC, Rik­ki A Har­nanan and Chase Pe­gus, in­struct­ed by Ele­na Da Sil­va Ot­t­ley. Alexan­der was rep­re­sent­ed by Ar­ron Levi Daniel Smith, in­struct­ed by Amelia Kam­raj. Alexan­der did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment up to press time.