An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), Davlin Thomas, has been award­ed just over $1 mil­lion in dam­ages af­ter the court ruled that 14 defam­a­to­ry state­ments, pub­lished be­tween March to June 2020, on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms by Naresh Siewah, had ma­ligned Thomas’s char­ac­ter and dis­cred­it­ed him in the pub­lic’s eyes.

In a judg­ment by Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed on Thurs­day, she said the posts on Siewah’s per­son­al Face­book page and the group Face­book pages “Trin­bago­Lives­Mat­ter” and “The Voice Of TnT 99%”–con­sti­tut­ed per­son­al at­tacks against Thomas.

Thomas, who is al­so the vice chair­man and chair­man of the Fi­nance and Hu­man Re­sources Com­mit­tee of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), brought le­gal ac­tion seek­ing dam­ages which in­clud­ed ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages; spe­cial dam­ages; and dam­ages for the re­pub­li­ca­tion of Face­book posts by third par­ties.

In ad­di­tion, Thomas had al­so sought to ob­tain an in­junc­tion to pro­hib­it Siewah and oth­ers from fur­ther pub­lish­ing or caus­ing to be pub­lished any words, state­ments and/or in­nu­en­dos de­fam­ing him; an apol­o­gy and pub­lic re­trac­tion in writ­ing by Siewah which would take the same form of the orig­i­nal defam­a­to­ry pub­li­ca­tions.

Siewah de­nied that he had spo­ken or pub­lished cer­tain words set out in the Face­book posts and that the words com­plained of did not re­fer to Thomas.

He claimed while they could not be un­der­stood to bear or be ca­pa­ble of ear­ing the al­leged defam­a­to­ry mean­ings, they were mere words of heat and that they were pro­tect­ed by qual­i­fied priv­i­lege.

Thomas, in his ap­pli­ca­tion to court, con­tend­ed the Face­book posts were in­ac­cu­rate, mis­lead­ing, dis­parag­ing, defam­a­to­ry and ma­li­cious and por­trayed him in a neg­a­tive light through the use of un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, nepo­tism and fraud.

He al­so con­tend­ed that the words in the pub­li­ca­tions made by Siewah were done in a sen­sa­tion­al and promi­nent man­ner and with a reck­less dis­re­gard as to ac­cu­ra­cy there­of and as to whether the words were li­bel­lous.

Thomas said the posts in­ferred, among oth­er things, that he had com­mit­ted wrong­do­ings at the NCRHA.

Thomas’ at­tor­neys is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Siewah on June 9, 2020, fol­low­ing which he ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt the day af­ter and apol­o­gised and re­moved the posts from his per­son­al Face­book pro­file.

Af­ter ac­cept­ing the mis­take of post­ing the al­le­ga­tions and as­sur­ing Thomas that there would not be a re­peat of such ac­tions, Siewah told Thomas that his per­son­al Face­book ac­count was hacked and that cer­tain posts were gen­er­at­ed by one “John­ny Walk­er” and al­leged­ly ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the posts made by him­self and not by “John­ny Walk­er”.

Thomas said the pub­li­ca­tions oc­curred over a span of two- and- a- half months and that Siewah would have known about them but did not re­move them.

Thomas said he suf­fered shame and em­bar­rass­ment due to the al­le­ga­tions and that Siewah’s ac­tions had brought him in­to pub­lic odi­um and dis­re­pute, while ex­pos­ing him to pub­lic ridicule and con­tempt.

Thomas said his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing his wife and chil­dren, had been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the al­le­ga­tions which have left them trau­ma­tised by the per­sis­tent and re­lent­less at­tacks by Siewah.

Siewah was or­dered to pay Thomas gen­er­al dam­ages in the sum of $800,000 in­clu­sive of ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages, to­geth­er with in­ter­est there­on at the rate of 2.5 per cent per an­num from June 24, 2020 to the date of judg­ment.

He was al­so or­dered to pay Thomas ex­em­plary dam­ages in the sum of $100,000 and to re­frain from pub­lish­ing or caus­ing to be pub­lished and/or from re­pub­lish­ing or caus­ing to be re­pub­lished any words, state­ments and/or in­nu­en­dos defam­a­to­ry of Thomas.

Siewah was al­so di­rect­ed to is­sue an apol­o­gy and pub­lic re­trac­tion in writ­ing to Thomas, with the pub­lic state­ment tak­ing the same form of the orig­i­nal defam­a­to­ry pub­li­ca­tion, and be­ing an equal­ly high­light­ed post pub­lished on his Face­book pro­file and the oth­er Face­book pro­files that he shared the posts on.

Siewah was fur­ther or­dered to pay Thomas’ costs in the sum of $101,500.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Thomas told Guardian Me­dia, “I feel vin­di­cat­ed. I will con­tin­ue to do my job on be­half of the peo­ple and my team as I did dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic.”