Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) chair­man George Nicholas has com­menced le­gal pro­ceed­ings against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for li­bel. In the claim filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court by the busi­ness­man's at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, Nicholas is claim­ing the defama­tion oc­curred through pub­li­ca­tion of a re­port in the Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­pers on Jan­u­ary 19. One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed, par­ent com­pa­ny of the news­pa­per and re­porter Joel Julien, who wrote the sto­ry, were list­ed as par­ties to the pro­ceed­ings. Through the le­gal ac­tion, Nicholas' at­tor­neys are claim­ing ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages for li­bel and in­junc­tions stop­ping Row­ley, the news­pa­per and Julien from "speak­ing, cir­cu­lat­ing and pub­lish­ing" ma­te­r­i­al defam­a­to­ry to their client (Nicholas).

In the claim, Nicholas is al­leg­ing the re­port grave­ly in­jured Nicholas' feel­ings and ex­posed him to pub­lic ridicule, scan­dal and con­tempt. In the claim, Nicholas' at­tor­neys said their client would be seek­ing ex­em­plary dam­ages be­cause the pub­li­ca­tion was pub­lished in a sen­sa­tion­al man­ner. Nicholas al­so al­leged the news­pa­per prof­it­ed fi­nan­cial­ly from pub­lish­ing the re­port and is con­tin­u­ing to prof­it as the re­port was al­so pub­lished on the com­pa­ny's Web site. "Un­less re­strained by in­junc­tion, One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed will con­tin­ue to pub­lish or cause to be pub­lished the said or sim­i­lar li­bels of Nicholas, to­geth­er with un­po­liced com­ments ap­pear­ing un­der the on­line ver­sion," the claim form stat­ed. Nicholas' claim al­so al­leged the news­pa­per was con­tact­ed via a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in No­vem­ber 2011 over a sim­i­lar ar­ti­cle which was lat­er re­moved from the com­pa­ny's Web site.