Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has won a defama­tion law­suit brought against him by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in made the rul­ing in a writ­ten judg­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day.

The case stems from an ar­ti­cle in the Ex­press news­pa­per on Jan­u­ary 6, 2020, un­der the head­line “Row­ley vs Wait­he … Terse Text Ex­change”. Ex­press Ed­i­tor-in-Chief Omatie Ly­der was al­so list­ed as a de­fen­dant.

The news­pa­per had print­ed the fol­low­ing al­leged ex­change of text mes­sages be­tween Dr Row­ley and Fix­in T&T leader Kirk Wait­he:

Wait­he: “Politi­cians serve their par­ty best when they put their coun­try first” - Au­thor un­known.

Row­ley: What do you know about it? What sac­ri­fice have you ever made for this coun­try oth­er than to be a damn hyp­ocrite. You know so much about Camille and $148,000 but when it comes to the out­right and hu­mon­gous thiev­ery of the many UNC op­er­a­tives who are and were your pay­mas­ters yuh are death­ly silent. What about the $120 mil­lion Eden Gar­dens and the ques­tions that Mooni­lal and Jear­lean have to an­swer?

Mooni­lal sued Row­ley, ar­gu­ing those quotes were defam­a­to­ry.

Row­ley and his at­tor­neys, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the state­ments were not made specif­i­cal­ly about Mooni­lal. They al­so said the state­ments could not rea­son­ably be un­der­stood as defam­a­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly when read in­di­vid­u­al­ly or even as a com­bined text.

The court agreed, say­ing the two sen­tences, when read in­di­vid­u­al­ly, did not con­tain defam­a­to­ry mean­ings and even when jux­ta­posed, would not harm Mooni­lal’s rep­u­ta­tion.

The court al­so ruled that to say a min­is­ter un­der whose watch Eden Gar­dens fell has ques­tions to an­swer is not defam­a­to­ry.

The court al­so ruled that the state­ments were part of a pri­vate and in­for­mal con­ver­sa­tion rather than a for­mal pub­lic ac­cu­sa­tion and did not meet the thresh­old for defama­tion.

“‘Hu­mon­gous thiev­ery of UNC op­er­a­tives’ stand­ing on its own can­not be con­sid­ered defam­a­to­ry, even of the group of uniden­ti­fied per­sons. In the cir­cum­stances, the omis­sion to iden­ti­fy the Claimant as a mem­ber of the group may even be in­con­se­quen­tial,” Jus­tice Gob­in ruled.

At­tor­neys al­so ar­gued the state­ments were part of a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion and should not be con­strued as for­mal ac­cu­sa­tions.

“The al­leged state­ments were ut­tered in the course of a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Dr Row­ley and Mr Wait­he in the midst of what may be fair­ly de­scribed as a po­lit­i­cal de­bate which was rag­ing in the pub­lic do­main. It was done through a ca­su­al medi­um of What­sApp mes­sag­ing. It was an in­for­mal con­ver­sa­tion, as close to an ac­tu­al con­ver­sa­tion as one might get with­out ac­tu­al­ly speak­ing, ut­ter­ing words. No rea­son­able read­er would look at the mes­sages as he or she would, pre­pared text or script. In a loose, flow­ing pri­vate ex­change, no rea­son­able read­er would look for struc­ture of re­spons­es to de­rive mean­ing. The in­or­di­nate re­liance on jux­ta­po­si­tion is mis­placed,” Gob­in said in her judg­ment.

Jus­tice Gob­in al­so ac­knowl­edged there is wider lat­i­tude giv­en to po­lit­i­cal dis­course. She not­ed that po­lit­i­cal fig­ures are sub­ject to greater scruti­ny and crit­i­cism, which re­quires a high­er tol­er­ance for ro­bust de­bate.

She ruled, “Politi­cians would do well to recog­nise and ac­cept that in­creas­ing­ly, the scales are tip­ping in favour of pro­tect­ing the right to free po­lit­i­cal ex­pres­sion in a democ­ra­cy, as Courts ac­knowl­edge the im­por­tance of po­lit­i­cal de­bate and its vi­tal role in achiev­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment and pro­mot­ing the rule of law.”

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly post­ed the judg­ment on his Face­book page but didn’t com­ment di­rect­ly on it.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia on the rul­ing, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal said he in­tends to ap­peal.

“We have con­sid­ered the judg­ment and we be­lieve that the tri­al judge un­for­tu­nate­ly erred in her in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s words in re­la­tion to me. I be­lieve that the Prime Min­is­ter ut­tered a hor­ri­ble and un­found­ed defam­a­to­ry state­ment in re­la­tion to me. I in­tend to ful­ly de­fend my­self against his ac­tions and will be tak­ing my at­tor­ney’s ad­vice in re­la­tion to an ap­peal. This isn’t over yet.”

Mooni­lal was rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, and Vashist Seep­er­sad. Dr Row­ley was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Michael Quam­i­na, SC, and Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon.