Two defama­tion law­suits, brought by Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings against Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, are set to go on tri­al next year.

High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo gave the in­di­ca­tion as the cas­es came up for case man­age­ment be­fore her yes­ter­day. 

While Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo in­di­cat­ed that her sched­ule in the first quar­ter of 2025 was free for her to host the tri­als, she not­ed that she would re­serve ex­act dates af­ter she de­ter­mined a se­ries of ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions and ap­pli­ca­tions to strike out por­tions of the claims made by the par­ties on Au­gust 9. Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo sought the par­ties’ views on con­sol­i­dat­ing the cas­es for tri­al. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Ron­nie Bisses­sar, who is lead­ing Cum­mings’ le­gal team along­side Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, sug­gest­ed that both cas­es should be heard and de­ter­mined sep­a­rate­ly. 

He not­ed that the first case, in which Cum­mings sued over state­ments made by Lutch­me­di­al in re­la­tion to al­le­ga­tions against him in a 2019 Spe­cial Branch re­port at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) pub­lic meet­ing on May 5, 2022, should be dealt with first. 

In that case, the T&T Ex­press news­pa­per and two of its jour­nal­ists were named as de­fen­dants along­side Lutch­me­di­al as a re­port on her state­ments was pub­lished by them. 

He sug­gest­ed that af­ter that case was heard and de­ter­mined, then Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo could move on the sec­ond case over sub­se­quent com­ments made by Lutch­me­di­al in re­la­tion to a pri­vate loan from Ven­ture Cred­it Union tak­en by Cum­mings and al­leged­ly re­paid by a third par­ty.

The com­ments were made on an­oth­er UNC plat­form and were re­pub­lished on Lutch­me­di­al’s so­cial me­dia page the fol­low­ing day.

While he not­ed that the first case may help de­ter­mine whether Lutch­me­di­al’s sub­se­quent state­ments were defam­a­to­ry, he point­ed out that the sec­ond case al­so dealt with the al­leged dis­clo­sure of Cum­mings con­fi­den­tial fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and records.

At­tor­ney Faa­rees Ho­sein, who rep­re­sent­ed the news­pa­per and its jour­nal­ists, in­di­cat­ed that his clients did not have a stake in the de­ci­sion as they were on­ly in­volved in one of the cas­es.

Lutch­me­di­al’s lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, ob­ject­ed to the move as he sug­gest­ed that con­sol­i­da­tion was pre­ferred to help re­solve the cas­es quick­ly.

“It would save us costs and time in this mat­ter,” he said.

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to hear and de­ter­mine the case over the Spe­cial Branch re­port be­fore con­sid­er­ing the oth­er.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at Kapok Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day, Ma­haraj re­vealed that Cum­mings would be pur­su­ing a sep­a­rate case against the State over the fail­ure of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to ac­cede to his re­quest to re­tract the con­tro­ver­sial re­port.

Re­fer­ring to the re­port, Ma­haraj said, “The al­le­ga­tions in that re­port were base­less. They were un-in­ves­ti­gat­ed. There was no ev­i­dence to sup­port any of the al­le­ga­tions and there was no per­son iden­ti­fied in that re­port as mak­ing any al­le­ga­tions.”

Ma­haraj not­ed that his client pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence to re­fute all the al­le­ga­tions.

He claimed that Cum­mings de­cid­ed to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion af­ter for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who was at the helm of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) when the re­port was is­sued in 2019, not­ed that the al­le­ga­tions were un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed in a ra­dio in­ter­view.

Ma­haraj ques­tioned how the re­port, which was meant to be in the pos­ses­sion of the Spe­cial Branch and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, was re­leased.

Ma­haraj not­ed that his client was not op­posed to the TTPS in­ves­ti­gat­ing him but was con­cerned over the ef­fect the re­port’s pub­li­ca­tion had on his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

“So what Min­is­ter Cum­mings was say­ing is I do not want you to stop your in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You could in­ves­ti­gate how much you want but un­til you con­clude your in­ves­ti­ga­tions take off all those defam­a­to­ry things and base­less things from the records of the po­lice ser­vice,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj re­vealed that Cum­mings planned to place any com­pen­sa­tion he may po­ten­tial­ly re­ceive from the case in a fund to pro­vide sup­port for his young con­stituents from La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro.

The case is ex­pect­ed to be filed next week.

Cum­mings is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by  Rik­ki Har­nanan, Kings­ley Wales­by, Varin Gopaul-Go­sine and Nicholas Sant. Lutch­me­di­al is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jared Ja­groo.