Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

For­mer THA Chief Sec­re­tary and Sen­a­tor An­cil Den­nis's at­tor­ney has re­ject­ed defama­tion claims made against him by THA Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett, stat­ing that the le­gal no­tice sent to him does not meet pro­ce­dur­al stan­dards.

Hack­ett served Den­nis with the pre-ac­tion le­gal let­ter on 12 Feb­ru­ary, giv­ing him sev­en days to apol­o­gise and re­tract al­le­ga­tions of mis­man­age­ment.

In a re­sponse is­sued by at­tor­ney Ka­reem Mar­celle, Den­nis’s le­gal team ar­gued that Hack­ett’s le­gal let­ter failed to es­tab­lish a pri­ma fa­cie case of defama­tion. They stat­ed that it lacked es­sen­tial de­tails, sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, and ref­er­ences to le­gal prin­ci­ples.

Den­nis al­so de­nied de­fam­ing Hack­ett. The let­ter as­sert­ed that his state­ments were based on facts, opin­ion, and pub­lic in­ter­est. His at­tor­neys have called on Hack­ett to with­draw the claim and cov­er Den­nis’s le­gal costs.

The dis­pute stems from Den­nis’s crit­i­cisms of the THA’s han­dling of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sup­port grants.