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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Inshan sends pre-action letter to Cro Cro

by

Kevon Felmine
737 days ago
20230213

For­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch We­st­on “Cro Cro” Rawl­ins has 28 days to re­spond to a le­gal ac­tion threat by busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael for al­leged defam­a­to­ry com­ments in his 2023 ca­lyp­so, An­oth­er Sat Out­side Again.

Should the vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian fail to re­spond to the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter by Ish­mael’s at­tor­ney, Richard Jages­sar, he may face the High Court.

The ac­tion per­tains to Rawl­ins’ per­for­mance of the ca­lyp­so on Feb­ru­ary 5, which men­tions the name Ish­mael as well as Bam­boo, where Ish­mael op­er­ates his busi­ness.

In the let­ter is­sued yes­ter­day, Jages­sar said Rawl­ins’ ca­lyp­so was un­true and low­ered his client’s rep­u­ta­tion and re­sult­ed in a loss of sales at his busi­ness.

Ish­mael, a used car deal­er and tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter, seeks a claim that would or­der Rawl­ins to im­me­di­ate­ly is­sue a writ­ten apol­o­gy pub­lished in all three dai­ly news­pa­pers and an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing him from per­form­ing any song that de­fames him.

The claim al­so seeks an in­junc­tion to pre­vent Rawl­ins from re­dis­trib­ut­ing any per­for­mance that de­fames Ish­mael and pay gen­er­al dam­ages for defama­tion, ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages, costs and any fur­ther re­liefs the court con­sid­ers fit.

“Fur­ther, take no­tice that we are of the view that this mat­ter ought to be re­solved am­i­ca­bly and quick­ly, fail­ing which, we have firm in­struc­tions to file the pro­posed claim no lat­er than 28 days af­ter the date of this let­ter,” Jages­sar said.

While the song does not men­tion Ish­mael specif­i­cal­ly, Jages­sar said the words iden­ti­fy his client. He said any rea­son­able per­son would as­sume the Ish­mael re­ferred to in the song was his client.

He al­so not­ed Rawl­ins’ re­sponse to a jour­nal­ist, where he did not de­ny Ish­mael was the sub­ject of the ca­lyp­so.

Jages­sar said Rawl­ins per­formed the ca­lyp­so in front of over 100 peo­ple, and there were record­ings of the per­for­mance on sev­er­al so­cial me­dia plat­forms, mak­ing the al­leged defama­tion wide­ly pub­lished.

Jages­sar said the al­leged defam­a­to­ry com­ments low­ered Ish­mael’s rep­u­ta­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty and gives peo­ple the im­pres­sion Ish­mael is in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, is a racist, lacks in­tegri­ty, is a hyp­ocrite and at­tacks and called up­on oth­er peo­ple in Trinidad to at­tack a young Afro-Trinida­di­an man.

“There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the words used. The per­former, by his lyrics, is sep­a­rat­ing the lis­ten­ers in­to two groups: ‘we’ and them, where ‘we’ re­fer to peo­ple of the per­former’s race and the mean­ing peo­ple who sell dou­bles and pies and per­form chut­ney songs. The lyrics tak­en as a whole are in­tend­ed to di­vide the lis­ten­ers and Trinidad and To­ba­go along a racial line,” Jages­sar said.


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