Derek Achong

Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings is no longer pur­su­ing an ap­peal over a judge’s de­ci­sion to not grant him an in­junc­tion bar­ring Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al from re­post­ing cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against him on her so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

Cum­mings’ lawyers in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to with­draw his ap­peal and were grant­ed leave to do so by Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Mal­colm Holdip ear­li­er this month.

Cum­mings was or­dered to pay Lutch­me­di­al’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the now-dis­con­tin­ued ap­peal.

Cum­mings first threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against Lutch­me­di­al, the Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­per, its ed­i­tor-in-chief Omatie Ly­der and jour­nal­ist An­na Ram­dass, over com­ments Lutch­me­di­al made about a leaked TTPS Spe­cial Branch re­port dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on May 5.

Cum­mings’ lawyers filed the law­suit two days lat­er af­ter none of the par­ties re­spond­ed to the le­gal threat by the dead­line they had set.

Cum­mings then threat­ened an­oth­er law­suit over com­ments al­leged­ly made by her dur­ing a sub­se­quent UNC Vir­tu­al Re­port.

Cum­mings’ lawyers sought the in­junc­tion as they claimed Lutch­me­di­al had leaked con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a source of funds de­c­la­ra­tion form, two let­ters of awards and a cheque which all ref­er­enced Cum­mings.

Af­ter the Spe­cial Branch re­port was leaked, Cum­mings re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and land grab­bing con­tained in it.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so re­fused to take any ac­tion in re­la­tion to the re­port, as he claimed the Op­po­si­tion was us­ing it for po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage whilst know­ing the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in it was un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

In re­fus­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion for the in­junc­tion on June 10, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo ruled that the in­for­ma­tion Cum­mings sought to clas­si­fy as con­fi­den­tial could be in the pub­lic do­main as he is a po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed per­son.

“The ev­i­dence be­fore the court at this stage sug­gests that Ms Lutch­me­di­al took a re­spon­si­ble, me­thod­i­cal, rea­soned, and care­ful ap­proach and ex­er­cised due dili­gence in con­firm­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ments which the whis­tle-blow­er left on her wind­screen and be­fore mak­ing state­ments on May 16 and May 17,” she said.

Kan­ga­loo al­so not­ed that Lutch­me­di­al could af­ford to pay Cum­mings com­pen­sa­tion if her state­ments are even­tu­al­ly found to be defam­a­to­ry in his sub­stan­tive case.

In his pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal, Cum­mings’ le­gal team raised over a dozen grounds why they felt Kan­ga­loo got it wrong.

Lutch­me­di­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jared Ja­groo, Kent Sam­lal Vishal Siewsaran and Natasha Bis­ram.

Cum­mings was rep­re­sent­ed by Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai, Christo­pher George, Jen­nifer Farah-Tull and Antonya Pierre.