Sto­ries by Derek Achong

Busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael has made good on his threat to sue four-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch We­st­on “Cro Cro” Rawl­ins for defama­tion over his en­try in this year’s Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

Ish­mael’s lawyer Richard Jag­gasar filed the law­suit against Rawl­ins and the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (COTT) yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

In his court fil­ings, Jag­gasar claimed that on Feb­ru­ary 5, Rawl­ins, with COTT’s per­mis­sion per­formed a ca­lyp­so ti­tled An­oth­er Sat Maraj is Out­side Again which al­leged­ly named his clients.

“The lyrics of the song di­rect­ly name, iden­ti­fy, and at­tack the claimant; and en­cour­ages oth­ers to at­tack the claimant ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly and to fi­nan­cial­ly ab­stain from his busi­ness­es,” Jag­gasar said.

“As a re­sult of the lyrics of the song the claimant is now viewed as a crim­i­nal, a racist, and a thief,” he added.

He claimed a video of Rawl­ins per­form­ing the song was post­ed on YouTube and shared on so­cial me­dia with tags iden­ti­fy­ing his client.

Al­though Rawl­ins did not qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals of the com­pe­ti­tion at Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta in Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Feb­ru­ary 11, Jag­gasar claimed the video of the per­for­mance was wide­ly shared.

Jag­gasar said al­though a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was served on Rawl­ins and was re­port­ed in the dai­ly news­pa­pers, Rawl­ins failed to re­spond lead­ing to the law­suit.

“At the tri­al, this shall be con­tend­ed as an ag­gra­vat­ed fac­tor as it is in com­plete de­fi­ance of nor­mal prac­tice, prac­tice di­rec­tions, and makes a mock­ery of the ju­di­cial sys­tem,” Jag­gasar said.

He re­ferred to a re­port in which Rawl­ins was in­ter­viewed and re­ject­ed the le­gal threat as he de­nied that Ish­mael was the sub­ject of the song.

Jag­gasar chal­lenged Rawl­ins’ claim over the song as he con­tend­ed that Rawl­ins re­peat­ed­ly men­tioned “Ish­mael” through­out.

“In any event and for the re­moval of doubt the pub­lic con­tin­ued to take the defam­a­to­ry song as re­fer­ring to the claimant,” he said.

He point­ed to an in­ter­view with Rawl­ins on Street 91.9 FM on Feb­ru­ary 14, in which Rawl­ins al­leged­ly ad­mit­ted to “cam­ou­flag­ing” his client’s name in the song tar­get­ing him.

Jag­gasar point­ed to the fact that the song was re­peat­ed­ly high­light­ed in the ad­ver­tise­ment for events al­leged­ly host­ed by Rawl­ins this week­end at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza in Port-of-Spain and at the Na­pari­ma Bowl.

“The first de­fen­dant has not replied to the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter but ap­pears to be host­ing an event which is geared to­wards pub­licly re­ply­ing to the let­ter,” he said, as he point­ed out that the ad­ver­tise­ment in­di­cat­ed that the pro­ceeds of the events would as­sist Rawl­ins in pay­ing po­ten­tial le­gal fees over the song.

Jag­gasar not­ed that as the event was ad­ver­tised on the ra­dio, a broad­cast li­cense from COTT was re­quired as the song was reg­is­tered with it.

He claimed that when he con­tact­ed COTT last month to sig­nal his client’s in­ten­tion to sue, COTT con­firmed that the li­cence was re­quired and is­sued and it col­lect­ed roy­al­ties on the song.

“It shall al­so be con­tend­ed at tri­al that the sec­ond de­fen­dant, as the law­ful own­er of the state­ment, knew or ought to have known by their own as­sess­ment that the song was defam­a­to­ry and did not dis­con­tin­ue the per­mis­sion to per­form same or pre­vent it from be­ing broad­cast­ed,” he said.

“Even to date they have opt­ed to take no ac­tion,” Jag­gasar said.

Through the law­suit, Ish­mael is claim­ing gen­er­al and ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages for the al­leged dam­age to his char­ac­ter. He is claim­ing spe­cial dam­ages as he claimed that his au­to­mo­tive and restau­rant busi­ness­es were al­leged­ly af­fect­ed. He is al­so seek­ing an in­junc­tion re­strain­ing Rawl­ins from per­form­ing the song and dis­trib­ut­ing the video record­ing of the per­for­mance.

The case has been as­signed to Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad.