Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man from Rousil­lac has been or­dered to pay al­most $300,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a pub­lic health in­spec­tor for de­fam­ing him in a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts.

High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son, KC, or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion last Wednes­day as she up­held a law­suit brought by act­ing pub­lic health in­spec­tor II O’Neal Ali against Mo­han Cha­toor.

The law­suit stemmed from 16 posts made by Cha­toor on his Face­book ac­count be­tween Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2023.

The posts came af­ter Ali and his col­leagues per­formed a site vis­it at a par­cel of land owned by Cha­toor, which he (Cha­toor) was seek­ing ap­proval to sub­di­vide for res­i­den­tial pur­pos­es.

In posts, Cha­toor ac­cused Ali and his col­leagues of bribery, cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct in pro­cess­ing his ap­pli­ca­tion.

The post in­clud­ed a video clip of Ali and his ve­hi­cle cap­tured by Cha­toor while Ali and his col­leagues were do­ing the site vis­it.

Ali, through his lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, filed the case as he claimed that his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion was dam­aged.

Al­though Cha­toor’s ac­count was not in his le­gal name, the posts were linked to him based on his voice and ref­er­ences to his ap­pli­ca­tion in the video record­ing.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Wil­son ruled that the posts were clear­ly defam­a­to­ry.

“These are al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal con­duct and se­ri­ous pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct that would clear­ly low­er the claimant in the es­ti­ma­tion of right-think­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety,” she said.

She found that Cha­toor failed to present ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy his ac­cu­sa­tions.

“I have found on the ev­i­dence that the de­fen­dant’s posts were not com­ments but as­ser­tions of fact that the claimant and oth­er of­fi­cers ex­pect­ed or de­mand­ed bribes,” Jus­tice Wil­son said.

“The de­fen­dant has plead­ed no facts to sup­port such an al­le­ga­tion and the frus­tra­tion he has ex­pressed with de­lays does not con­sti­tute a fac­tu­al ba­sis for ac­cus­ing the claimant and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cers of crim­i­nal con­duct,” she added.

In rul­ing that Ali should re­ceive $250,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, Jus­tice Wil­son not­ed that he served as a pub­lic health in­spec­tor for over two decades and was al­so a qual­i­fied at­tor­ney-at-law.

She al­so con­sid­ered that Cha­toor threat­ened to make the posts af­ter the site vis­it, failed to apol­o­gise af­ter be­ing threat­ened with le­gal ac­tion and re­peat­ed­ly de­nied that the posts iden­ti­fied Ali al­though he was clear­ly vis­i­ble in the video record­ing.

“The ev­i­dence es­tab­lish­es that the de­fen­dant tar­get­ed the claimant and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cers while in the course of du­ty and made se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal­i­ty with­out a fac­tu­al ba­sis,” Jus­tice Wil­son said.

“He (Cha­toor) used so­cial me­dia to shame them and to in­flu­ence his de­sired out­come,” she added.

Cha­toor was al­so or­dered to pay Ali $46,500 in le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Ali was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Lyn­da Gopeesingh, while Mustapha Khan rep­re­sent­ed Cha­toor.