A High Court judge has set Ju­ly 21-23 next year for hear­ing the defama­tion claim brought by Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter, Fos­ter Cum­mings, against op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leg­is­la­tor, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al.

Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo set the tri­al dates at a pre-tri­al re­view af­ter rul­ing on ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions. She al­so set the dates for the min­is­ter’s sec­ond defama­tion claim against Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al on the last day of the tri­al in Ju­ly.

Cum­mings filed a defama­tion law­suit against Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, claim­ing that he was de­famed when, on May 5, 2022, at a UNC pub­lic meet­ing, she re­vealed the con­tents of a Spe­cial Branch re­port, which she said she re­ceived in her mail­box from a whistle­blow­er.

The Ex­press news­pa­per re­pub­lished the unedit­ed con­tents of the po­lice re­port af­ter Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al dis­closed it at the meet­ing.

Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al lat­er post­ed a state­ment on her Face­book ac­count about the al­le­ga­tions, call­ing for the po­lice to thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate them.

In his law­suit, Cum­mings con­tend­ed the re­port was “pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial” and should not have been re­vealed to the pub­lic.

But on May 16, 2022, at an­oth­er UNC pub­lic meet­ing, Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al pre­sent­ed sev­er­al doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a source-of-funds de­c­la­ra­tion form, two let­ters of award and a cheque, which all ref­er­enced Cum­mings, which she again post­ed on her Face­book page.

He sub­se­quent­ly sought an in­junc­tion to re­strain Lutch­me­di­al from re­post­ing cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against him on her so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

On June 10, 2022, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo dis­missed his in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, rul­ing that the in­for­ma­tion Cum­mings sought to clas­si­fy as con­fi­den­tial could be in the pub­lic do­main, as he is a po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed per­son.

In Feb­ru­ary, the Ap­peal Court al­lowed Cum­mings to re­ply to Lutch­me­di­al’s de­fence by in­tro­duc­ing ev­i­dence to re­but some of her con­tentions.

In June, the min­is­ter al­so filed his nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al claim against the State over the “leaked” Spe­cial Branch re­port as he sought to have his name cleared.

Cum­mings is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the “gross vi­o­la­tion” of his rights to pri­vate life, the mis­use of his pri­vate in­for­ma­tion and for breach of con­fi­dence by the State through the ac­tions of the po­lice by dis­clos­ing in­for­ma­tion in the Spe­cial Branch note which iden­ti­fied him as a sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He is al­so seek­ing re­dress for the “re­peat­ed acts of dis­clo­sure” of his in­for­ma­tion by the dis­clo­sure of the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Nov 15, CMC