Yvonne Webb

San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray has ini­ti­at­ed le­gal pro­ceed­ings against deputy may­or Dr Navi Mu­radali and is seek­ing $650,000 for dam­age to her char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion. Through her at­tor­ney, Vish­wanath Ram­bar­ran, Coudray is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Mu­radali, who is al­so the coun­cil­lor for the elec­toral dis­trict of Les Ef­forts East Cipero. The let­ter was de­liv­ered to his sec­re­tary at his of­fice yes­ter­day. The le­gal ac­tion against Mu­radali stems from an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the T&T Guardian and its on­line ver­sion on Oc­to­ber 23, 2011, in which cer­tain al­le­ga­tions were made against Coudray with re­spect to the fund­ing of a mas­ter of busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­gramme she was pur­su­ing. The at­tor­ney said they were in­struct­ed that on Oc­to­ber 26, 2011, Mu­radali al­so caused a num­ber of defam­a­to­ry words to be pub­lished in the T&T Guardian, with re­spect to the same is­sue.

In the let­ter, the at­tor­ney said in­fer­ences were ca­pa­ble of be­ing drawn and in fact were drawn by read­ers. The pre-ac­tion let­ter said Coudray, be­fore her ap­point­ment as may­or, was a pub­lic ser­vant for 39 years, and was a high-pro­file fig­ure with an un­blem­ished record of in­tegri­ty and moral­i­ty in pub­lic of­fice. It said the state­ments were ex­treme­ly defam­a­to­ry and have brought Coudray in­to pub­lic ridicule, odi­um and dis­re­pute. "Our client's rep­u­ta­tion has been tar­nished by these spu­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions and she has been sub­ject­ed to nu­mer­ous ad­verse and un­war­rant­ed al­le­ga­tions as a re­sult," the let­ter said. Mu­radali has been giv­en 14 days to re­spond and to un­der­take a num­ber of re­quire­ments, in­clud­ing a pay­ment of $650,000; a re­trac­tion the al­le­ga­tions, to be cir­cu­lat­ed at Coudray's dis­cre­tion; a per­son­al apol­o­gy; and an ac­knowl­edge­ment that he has agreed to pay a sub­stan­tial sum in li­bel dam­ages to her. He is al­so be­ing asked to pay le­gal costs.