Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has dis­missed a defama­tion law­suit brought against En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal by a busi­ness­man and two of his com­pa­nies. 

Dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed the case filed by James Ker­ron Rose, Tril­lions Sys­tems Ltd and Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ments Ltd, over their fail­ure to prop­er­ly pur­sue it. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so grant­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion for Rose and his com­pa­nies’ lawyers to cease to act for the group over their fail­ure to pro­vide ad­e­quate in­struc­tions to pur­sue the case. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad point­ed out that the claimants had not filed their re­sponse to Mooni­lal’s de­fence and did not at­tend any hear­ings of the case since it was filed, in­clud­ing yes­ter­day, in which they were ex­pect­ed to clar­i­fy who would be rep­re­sent­ing them in the case go­ing for­ward. 

He sug­gest­ed that their con­duct demon­strat­ed that they were no longer in­ter­est­ed in the case. 

“A par­ty who in­vokes the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­vance it with alacrity,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

“De­lay will not be tol­er­at­ed by this court,” he added. 

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered Rose and the com­pa­nies to pay the le­gal costs Mooni­lal in­curred in pur­su­ing the case. 

The law­suit cen­tred around com­ments made by Mooni­lal while ad­dress­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) press brief­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2024. 

While the al­le­ga­tions can­not be ful­ly re­peat­ed, as they may still be found to be defam­a­to­ry if Rose and his com­pa­nies man­age to re­sus­ci­tate the case, Mooni­lal es­sen­tial­ly al­leged that one of the com­pa­nies en­gaged in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, while the oth­er al­leged­ly re­ceived a con­tract from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to con­struct box drains. 

Mooni­lal al­so claimed that Rose was a fea­tured speak­er at an event held by the He­li­co­nia Foun­da­tion at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters. 

In their court fil­ings, Rose and the com­pa­nies claimed that Mooni­lal dis­played a pho­to of a man whom he claimed to be Rose. 

They not­ed that Mooni­lal sub­se­quent­ly ad­mit­ted that the pho­to­graph was in fact that of a so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer, who has a sim­i­lar name to Rose. 

They said the state­ments caused Rose and the com­pa­nies se­ri­ous em­bar­rass­ment.

Through the law­suit, the com­pa­nies and Rose were seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­ages and an in­junc­tion block­ing Mooni­lal from re­peat­ing the al­le­ga­tions, an apol­o­gy and a pub­lic re­trac­tion.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal claimed that his orig­i­nal com­ments on the quar­ry­ing stemmed from a news­pa­per re­port. 

Mooni­lal not­ed that af­ter he raised the is­sues with Rose and his com­pa­ny, there was a sep­a­rate in­ves­tiga­tive news­pa­per re­port in­to Tril­lions claim­ing that hun­dreds of in­vestors were await­ing re­turns from the com­pa­ny’s cryp­tocur­ren­cy and forex in­vest­ment prod­ucts. 

He al­so point­ed out that the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) launched a probe based on the re­port. 

Mooni­lal called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to in­di­cate whether her po­lit­i­cal par­ty would sev­er its al­leged ties with Rose based on the out­come of the case. 

He promised to con­tin­ue to speak out against in­jus­tice and wrong­do­ing re­gard­less of the con­se­quences.