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Friday, July 11, 2025

Jack admits to defaming councillor

Now par­ties to agree on set­tle­ment

by

20140507

In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er has ad­mit­ted to de­fam­ing ex­pelled par­ty mem­ber and Ch­agua­nas coun­cil­lor Faaiq Mo­hammed.Dur­ing a hear­ing of Mo­hammed's law­suit in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day, Warn­er's at­tor­ney, Om Lal­la, said his client wished to ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty in the case to save ju­di­cial time and to give Warn­er an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fo­cus on his oth­er on­go­ing lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters.Lal­la said: "Hav­ing re­ceived ad­vice and wit­ness­ing the pro­ceed­ings, my client has tak­en the po­si­tion to ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty."

He said he had al­ready be­gun dis­cus­sions with Mo­hammed's lawyers in an at­tempt to agree on the com­pen­sa­tion Warn­er would have to pay, as well as the terms of an apol­o­gy and cor­re­spond­ing re­trac­tion. Warn­er's de­ci­sion comes just un­der three weeks be­fore the case was due to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram and two days af­ter the last hear­ing, when both sets of at­tor­neys made ap­pli­ca­tions for ir­rel­e­vant and base­less hearsay in­for­ma­tion to be struck from both sides' wit­ness state­ments.

As Kokaram was set to de­liv­er his oral rul­ing, Lal­la re­port­ed Warn­er's change in po­si­tion and sug­gest­ed that the rul­ing would now be aca­d­e­m­ic and un­nec­es­sary."I am quite con­fi­dent that re­gard­less of what the de­ci­sion is, that there is still a de­fend­able case," Lal­la said.Mo­hammed's at­tor­ney Avory Sinanan, SC, dis­agreed, say­ing Kokaram's de­ci­sion was re­quired to de­vel­op case law re­lat­ed to defama­tion and li­bel.

He al­so said the rul­ing would al­so as­sist if the two par­ties could not ar­rive at an agree­ment, in which case Kokaram would be re­quired to as­sess the dam­ages to which Mo­hammed is en­ti­tled.Kokaram even­tu­al­ly agreed with Sinanan and gave his rul­ing, in which he re­moved parts of the wit­ness state­ments which were deemed to be opin­ion and un­sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence.

As part of his rul­ing, Kokaram com­mend­ed both par­ties for their dili­gence in keep­ing dead­lines in the case as well as for abid­ing by an ini­tial agree­ment in which Warn­er had promised to not re­peat his state­ments.Mo­hammed, a 25-year-old stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), ini­ti­at­ed the law­suit af­ter he vot­ed for a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date for the post of pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer dur­ing the first meet­ing of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, al­most a month af­ter the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions last Oc­to­ber.

Mo­hammed, the coun­cil­lor for Char­lieville, claimed he was im­me­di­ate­ly ex­pelled from the par­ty by Warn­er, who then made defam­a­to­ry state­ments about him, ac­cus­ing him of tak­ing a bribe.Be­fore agree­ing to set­tle the mat­ter, Warn­er was re­ly­ing on the three-pronged de­fence of fair com­ment, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and qual­i­fied priv­i­lege. Among the wit­ness­es Warn­er cit­ed to de­fend against the claim was tele­vi­sion host and busi­ness­man In­shan Is­mael.

The par­ties have un­til June 9 to come to an agree­ment on the set­tle­ment. If un­suc­cess­ful they will re­turn be­fore Kokaram on Ju­ly 1.


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