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.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Another win for Colm against Phillip

by

150 days ago
20250213

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has record­ed an­oth­er le­gal vic­to­ry in his defama­tion law­suit against Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain this morn­ing, ap­pel­late judges Mark Mo­hammed, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son re­ject­ed Alexan­der’s ap­peal chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of a judge to up­hold the case and or­der $525,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

The ap­peal pan­el ruled that High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son could not be crit­i­cised for her han­dling of the case.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed com­plaints from Alexan­der’s lawyer Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er over Jus­tice Wil­son’s fail­ure to in­di­vid­u­al­ly con­sid­er the se­ries of state­ments made by Alexan­der.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said that there was com­pelling jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for deal­ing with the sev­en state­ments cu­mu­la­tive­ly.

He point­ed out that the posts were made over a 24-hour pe­ri­od, on the same medi­um, and were re­lat­ed.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed and his col­leagues al­so agreed with their col­league’s as­sess­ment of the com­pen­sa­tion for Im­bert.

“Hav­ing re­gard to the na­ture of the defama­tion in this case, the judge’s award was not in­or­di­nate­ly high,” he said.

As part of their de­ci­sion, the judges or­dered Alexan­der to pay Im­bert’s le­gal costs for the case.

Im­bert con­firmed the out­come of the ap­peal in a post on his X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count.

“The de­ci­sion of the High Court was AF­FIRMED,” he said.

The law­suit per­tained to Alexan­der’s posts on his Face­book page over sev­er­al hours be­tween 29 Feb­ru­ary 2020 and 1 March 2020.

Alexan­der al­leged that Im­bert had pur­chased an ex­ot­ic Swedish sports car for US$2 mil­lion by us­ing for­eign ex­change he ob­tained by cor­rupt means or by abus­ing his of­fice as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Im­bert de­nied any wrong­do­ing and filed the case, which was up­held by Jus­tice Wil­son in Oc­to­ber 2023.

In the judg­ment, Jus­tice Wil­son said Alexan­der’s state­ments did not meet the cri­te­ria of fair com­ment. She found Alexan­der failed to “es­tab­lish that the steps he had tak­en to gath­er and pub­lish the in­for­ma­tion were re­spon­si­ble and fair.”

“Al­though there is a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est in de­ter­min­ing that for­eign ex­change re­serves are dis­trib­uted in a fair and trans­par­ent man­ner, the de­fen­dant has failed to demon­strate that he took rea­son­able steps to ver­i­fy that the al­le­ga­tions made against the claimant were true,” she said.

“The tone of the pub­li­ca­tions was nei­ther mea­sured nor cir­cum­spect but may be la­belled as cav­a­lier or even dra­mat­ic,” she added.

Jus­tice Wil­son based the award of dam­ages on sev­er­al sim­i­lar judg­ments in­clud­ing an­oth­er defama­tion case Alexan­der lost against busi­ness­man An­drew Gabriel.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal, Im­bert’s lawyer Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, stat­ed that all but one of the sev­en state­ments was clear­ly defam­a­to­ry.

“That is not no joke lie. This is more than pi­cong,” Mar­tineau said.

“It is the man’s rep­u­ta­tion that is be­ing tar­nished in a very se­ri­ous way,” he added.

Im­bert was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas. Alexan­der was rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er. 


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored