Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness­man and so­cial ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael have ad­vised four-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch We­st­on “Cro Cro” Rawl­ins to pay his court or­dered dam­ages for defama­tion to avoid in­cur­ring in­ter­est. 

Ish­mael’s lawyer An­dre Cole made the re­quest in a let­ter sent to Rawl­ins’ lawyer Ka­reem Mar­celle, yes­ter­day. 

On Jan­u­ary 29, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad ruled that Rawl­ins de­famed Ish­mael in his 2023 song, An­oth­er Sat is Out­side Again. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered $250,000 in com­pen­sa­tion and in­di­cat­ed that statu­to­ry in­ter­est of three and a half per cent per an­num would ac­crue un­til it is cleared. 

As Jus­tice Seep­er­sad did not ap­ply a stay of ex­e­cu­tion on the judg­ment, Ish­mael could im­me­di­ate­ly seek to en­force. 

In the let­ter, Cole point­ed out that Rawl­ins was al­so or­dered to pay Ish­mael’s le­gal costs for the law­suit, which was cal­cu­lat­ed at $46,500. 

He al­so not­ed that Rawl­ins al­so owed $17,500 in le­gal costs re­lat­ed to an in­junc­tion Ish­mael ob­tained be­fore pur­su­ing the sub­stan­tive defama­tion case. 

“To avoid fur­ther haem­or­rhag­ing of costs and to bring clo­sure to the par­ties, we be­lieve it would be in the over­all best in­ter­est of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice to sat­is­fy this judg­ment prompt­ly,” Cole said.

“We trust that your client will take all rea­son­able steps to avoid the neg­a­tive ef­fects of fur­ther de­lay in judg­ment sat­is­fac­tion and ad­her­ing to the or­ders of the High Court,” he added. 

Rawl­ins penned the song last year fol­low­ing so­cial me­dia furore to­wards Ish­mael based on his com­ments on the cel­e­bra­tions host­ed by res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens af­ter fel­low res­i­dent Mar­celle was called to the bar in No­vem­ber, 2022.

Al­though Rawl­ins did not qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals of last year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, Ish­mael claimed that a video of his per­for­mance dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round of the com­pe­ti­tion at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege in Val­sayn was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. 

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad had to con­sid­er whether ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are pro­tect­ed by the defama­tion de­fence of qual­i­fied priv­i­lege. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that the ca­lyp­so was clear­ly di­rect­ed at Ish­mael de­spite Rawl­ins’ claims that he sought to pre­vent defama­tion by singing “Im­chan Im­chelle” in the song. 

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that Rawl­ins was free to use Ish­mael’s con­duct as the sub­ject of his ca­lyp­so, he not­ed that it must ad­here to the prin­ci­ples of fair com­ment.