Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is su­ing a for­mer na­tion­al crick­eter for al­leged­ly mak­ing a defam­a­to­ry com­ment on so­cial me­dia re­gard­ing his son's brief stint on the T&T Se­nior Men's Na­tion­al Foot­ball Team. 
In a defama­tion law­suit, filed in May, Grif­fith's lawyers are al­leg­ing that De­onar­ine Deyal, who serves as a se­lec­tor for the T&T Crick­et Board's Un­der-19 team, made the defam­a­to­ry com­ment in Jan­u­ary while com­ment­ing on an on­line ar­ti­cle that men­tioned the se­lec­tion of Grif­fith's son Gary Grif­fith III by for­mer na­tion­al team coach Ter­ry Fen­wick. 
Al­though Deyal's al­leged com­ments were in­clud­ed in the court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, they can­not be re­peat­ed to pre­vent fur­ther defama­tion. 
"By so do­ing the De­fen­dant in­ten­tion­al­ly or reck­less­ly brought the Claimant's good name and per­for­mance of the func­tions of his of­fice as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in odi­um, pub­lic scan­dal and dis­re­pute," Grif­fith's lawyers said in his state­ment of the case. 
They claimed that the post low­ered Grif­fith in the es­ti­ma­tion of or­di­nary, rea­son­able read­ers na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.
"The Claimant will main­tain at tri­al that no, or in­suf­fi­cient at­tempts were made by the De­fen­dant to ver­i­fy the ac­cu­ra­cy of the dam­ag­ing state­ments con­tained in the pub­li­ca­tions," they said. 
Through the law­suit, Grif­fith is seek­ing an in­junc­tion bar­ring Deyal from re­peat­ing the com­ments and fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.  
Grif­fith is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, Vashisht Seep­er­sad and Taruna Man­groo. 
The case is yet to be as­signed to a High Court Judge, who will set a date for a first hear­ing. 
On June 16, Grif­fith took to his of­fi­cial Face­book ac­count to crit­i­cise jour­nal­ist Lasana Liburd of Wired 868, who wrote the ar­ti­cle Deyal com­ment­ed on and sev­er­al oth­ers on the na­tion­al team in­clud­ing one over a re­port­ed dis­agree­ment be­tween Grif­fith's son, who did not get any game time, and a mem­ber of Fen­wick's coach­ing staff.
The ar­ti­cles came as Fen­wick was re­placed by Club San­do FC head coach An­gus Eve fol­low­ing the team's un­der­whelm­ing per­for­mance in the re­cent 2022 World Cup qual­i­fiers.
Eve, who start­ed his coach­ing ca­reer as Fen­wick's as­sis­tant at Pro-League out­fit San Juan Jabloteh over 15 years ago, led the team to a 6-1 vic­to­ry against Montser­rat in the first round qual­i­fi­er for the 2020 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, last Fri­day. 
The team will se­cure a place in the com­pe­ti­tion, which takes place in the Unit­ed States be­tween Ju­ly 10 and Au­gust 1, if it gets past French Guiana in a sec­ond-round match at 4.30 pm on Tues­day.