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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Phillip scores court victory: To pay less $ in defamation suit

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545 days ago
20231201
Political activist Phillip Alexander

Political activist Phillip Alexander

NICOLE DRAYTON

Derek Achong

Se­nior re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and for­mer Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Alexan­der has emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his ap­peal over be­ing or­dered by a judge to pay al­most $775,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to busi­ness­man An­drew Gabriel for defama­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Thurs­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Maria Wil­son, and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh up­held Alexan­der’s ap­peal in which he claimed that High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in erred when she ap­proved Gabriel’s case against him in April 2019.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar, who wrote the judg­ment that was ap­proved by his col­leagues, said, “In the cir­cum­stances, the tri­al judge mis­con­strued the ev­i­dence, the award as out­side the rea­son­able range of awards for defama­tion of this na­ture, and an award of such mag­ni­tude could on­ly serve to have a chill­ing ef­fect on the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of ex­pres­sion and free­dom and the right to ex­press po­lit­i­cal views.”

The law­suit stems from state­ments made by Alexan­der on a ra­dio talk show and in a sub­se­quent Face­book post on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2017.

Gabriel con­tend­ed that he was de­famed by the state­ments, which he claimed ac­cused him of be­ing guilty of se­ri­ous cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal con­duct. He claimed that the state­ments had a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on him and his fam­i­ly.

In up­hold­ing Gabriel’s case, Jus­tice Gob­in award­ed $525,000 in dam­ages for hurt feel­ings and loss of rep­u­ta­tion and $250,000 in ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages.

While she did not con­sid­er sub­se­quent state­ments made by Alexan­der to de­ter­mine li­a­bil­i­ty, she did so to as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion.

As he re­viewed the state­ments to de­ter­mine the ap­peal, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar not­ed that the claims made on the ra­dio show were not defam­a­to­ry as ruled by Jus­tice Gob­in.

While Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar not­ed that the so­cial me­dia post con­tained defam­a­to­ry re­marks, he not­ed that they were not aimed at Gabriel’s fam­i­ly as con­tend­ed.

He al­so ruled that the sub­se­quent state­ments made by Alexan­der, which were on­ly con­sid­ered when as­sess­ing com­pen­sa­tion, were not defam­a­to­ry.

“The ap­pel­lant over­stepped when he used the term ban­dit clan. Oth­er­wise, he was ex­press­ing po­lit­i­cal views which did not tres­pass in­to defama­tion,” Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar said.

Based on the dif­fer­ence in find­ings, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar not­ed that the sub­stan­tial com­pen­sa­tion was not jus­ti­fied.

“It was based on a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that all the pub­li­ca­tions, in­clud­ing the first, were defam­a­to­ry and that the sub­se­quent pub­li­ca­tions were all refer­able to the re­spon­dent and bore the mean­ings plead­ed by him,” he said.

He ruled that Gabriel should on­ly re­ceive $10,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

“This takes in­to ac­count the fact that the re­spon­dent’s rep­u­ta­tion can be con­sid­ered vin­di­cat­ed by this court in re­spect to the defam­a­to­ry state­ment proven, and that hurt feel­ings as­so­ci­at­ed with a ref­er­ence to him as a mem­ber of a ‘ban­dit clan’ would be more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly com­pen­sat­ed by a fig­ure in that range than by the award of the tri­al judge,” he said.

Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh agreed with his col­league’s judg­ment but pro­vid­ed his own views on some of the is­sues.

He not­ed that courts had to be cau­tious when or­der­ing ex­or­bi­tant awards in po­lit­i­cal defama­tion cas­es as such may have an ef­fect on free­dom of po­lit­i­cal speech and cit­i­zens hold­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials ac­count­able.

“In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic states the right bal­ance has to be struck be­tween pro­tec­tion of in­di­vid­ual rep­u­ta­tions and free­dom of po­lit­i­cal speech and ex­pres­sion,” Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh said.

Stat­ing that such should ap­ply to politi­cians as well as or­gan­is­ers, con­trib­u­tors and strong sup­port­ers, he added, “This is in the con­text that mem­bers of the pub­lic and op­pos­ing politi­cians do not have ready ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion about con­trib­u­tors to po­lit­i­cal par­ties or meth­ods of test­ing such in­for­ma­tion.”

Last month, Alexan­der was or­dered to pay $525,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert af­ter he ac­cused him of pur­chas­ing an ex­ot­ic Swedish sports car for US$2 mil­lion us­ing for­eign ex­change he ob­tained based on his Cab­i­net po­si­tion.

Ear­li­er this month, he was or­dered to pay $850,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day over com­ments he made in re­la­tion to the de­ci­sion of her par­ty to re­verse its de­ci­sion to con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Alexan­der is in the process of ap­peal­ing those cas­es.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Alexan­der, who re­tired from ac­tive pol­i­tics this month, re­ferred to a quote from the late Unit­ed States civ­il rights ac­tivist Mar­tin Luther King Jr: “The arc of the moral uni­verse is long, but it bends to­ward jus­tice.”

He was rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er and Anu­rad­ha Dean. Gabriel was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and Clay Hack­ett.


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