JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Court awards Rowley $475,000

by

20140212

A High Court judge has or­dered trade union leader Michael An­nisette to pay Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley $475,000 in dam­ages for li­bel.The pay­out, one of the high­est ever in a defama­tion case in this coun­try, was or­dered by Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, who de­liv­ered a 28-page judg­ment in Row­ley's favour yes­ter­day."Not on­ly has it been a con­tin­u­ing stain on his po­lit­i­cal life, but it has af­fect­ed his per­son­al and fam­i­ly life, hav­ing to ad­dress his chil­dren's con­cerns and em­bar­rass­ment about the al­le­ga­tions," Boodoos­ingh said.

In ad­di­tion to the dam­ages, Boodoos­ingh al­so or­dered An­nisette, who is pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), to pay Row­ley's $160,000 le­gal bill for bring­ing the law­suit.An­nisette first made the state­ments on Oc­to­ber 1, 2009, while he was con­tribut­ing as an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor to the de­bate on the Val­i­da­tion and Im­mu­ni­ty from Pro­ceed­ings Bill.

An­nisette had ac­cused Row­ley of en­gag­ing in ques­tion­able deal­ings with NH In­ter­na­tion­al Caribbean chair­man Emile Elias in re­la­tion to the Lan­date De­vel­op­ment Project."In my view, the words com­plained of in their to­tal­i­ty and con­text in­evitably con­vey an im­pu­ta­tion of im­pro­pri­ety or mis­con­duct on the part of the claimant in his pub­lic of­fice," Boodoos­ingh said.

He not­ed that the state­ments were made de­spite Row­ley's "strong pub­lic po­si­tion on in­stances of cor­rup­tion in pub­lic life" and the fact that he had been ab­solved of any wrong­do­ing by both the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and a com­mis­sion of en­quiry.Boodoos­ingh ruled that while An­nisette's state­ment was cov­ered by par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, he be­came li­able for defama­tion when he adopt­ed and con­firmed the com­ments in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view with a news­pa­per re­porter.

"It is im­por­tant to note that this is not an in­tru­sion by the court in­to the sphere of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege in cir­cum­stances such as the present," Boodoos­ingh said.In as­sess­ing the dam­ages, Boodoos­ingh said he con­sid­ered the po­si­tion and stand­ing of both par­ties, the grav­i­ty of the al­le­ga­tions, the ex­tent to which the state­ments were pub­lished and An­nisette's con­duct.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that ban­ter be­tween op­pos­ing politi­cians was part of par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings, he said: "An in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent, how­ev­er, would be seen in a dif­fer­ent light, less par­ti­san and less giv­en to un­jus­ti­fied or in­tem­per­ate at­tacks."

In his judg­ment, Boodoos­ingh al­so sought to give ad­vice to po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­ta­tors who wished to evade sim­i­lar defama­tion law­suits. He said that al­though mem­bers of the pub­lic had the right to vig­or­ous­ly crit­i­cise pub­lic fig­ures, they must al­ways con­sid­er "truth, ev­i­dence and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion."

"For what it is worth, it is im­por­tant for per­sons in pub­lic life and those who com­mit them­selves to pub­lic com­ments about oth­er per­sons to un­der­stand that con­se­quences may fol­low where loose and un­proven state­ments are made," Boodoos­ingh said.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, An­nisette de­clined to com­ment on the judg­ment un­til he had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to analyse and dis­cuss it with his at­tor­neys.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored