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Friday, July 18, 2025

Cummings, Lutchmedial feud with lawsuit challenge

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1163 days ago
20220511

Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings has launched le­gal ac­tion against UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, giv­ing her un­til 1 pm to­day to re­tract, re­move and apol­o­gise for “li­bel­lous” state­ments she made about him last Thurs­day. How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al has warned she has a lot of court clothes.

The stand­off aris­es from Lutch­me­di­al’s state­ments about Cum­mings at last week’s UNC “TT Speaks” meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do. She raised al­le­ga­tions in a 2019 TTPS Spe­cial Branch re­port on Cum­mings.

Cum­mings de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, deem­ing them false.

Yes­ter­day a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was sent to Lutch­me­di­al on Cum­mings’ be­half by at­tor­ney Jen­nifer Farah-Tull. At­tor­ney Christo­pher George and lead coun­sel Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai are al­so part of his team.

The let­ter al­leged defama­tion of char­ac­ter and in­ten­tion­al in­flic­tion of men­tal dis­tress on Cum­mings’ part via Lutch­me­di­al’s “li­bel­lous” state­ments. The claim al­so al­leged breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and mis­use of pri­vate in­for­ma­tion of Cum­mings.

Farah-Tull’s 22-point ar­gu­ment in­clud­ed that Cum­mings and his fam­i­ly have had cause to en­list the ser­vices of a pro­fes­sion­al ther­a­pist, as the ac­cu­sa­tions have led to cy­ber­bul­ly­ing of him­self, his wife and chil­dren by peo­ple who be­lieved Lutch­me­di­al’s state­ments to be true.

At­tor­neys gave Lutch­me­di­al un­til 1 pm to­day to re­move videos of her state­ment, do pub­lic re­trac­tion and apol­o­gise or High Court ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im in­junc­tive re­lief will be made against her. They al­so sought writ­ten un­der­tak­ing that she wouldn’t re­peat the state­ments and/or will cease from pub­lish­ing sim­i­lar defam­a­to­ry state­ments and/or al­le­ga­tions against Cum­mings.

But there will be no apol­o­gy or re­moval of the ma­te­r­i­al.

In im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Lutch­me­di­al, an at­tor­ney, con­firmed re­ceipt of the let­ter, stat­ing: “Af­ter fight­ing off the strong temp­ta­tion to throw it in the dust­bin, I de­cid­ed to pass it to my at­tor­ney, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan (SC) - the most ca­pa­ble At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“I’d like to in­form Mr Cum­mings and oth­ers, in case they’re un­aware, that I’ve donned my robes and bands for the past 15 years in de­fence of truth, jus­tice and the rule of law. As such, I have a lot of court clothes. I strong­ly ad­vise that they too should in­vest in ap­pro­pri­ate at­tire for the cour­t­house.”

Lutch­me­di­al said she wasn’t the au­thor of the re­port’s state­ments and, “Maybe, he should sue Spe­cial Branch and he may have to con­sult his ther­a­pist and take it to the Lord in prayer.”

Cum­mings - “Men­tal, emo­tion­al dis­tress”

Cum­mings’ at­tor­ney said Lutch­me­di­al’s defam­a­to­ry state­ments paint­ed him in a very neg­a­tive light “by use of vac­u­ous, mis­lead­ing and un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions of scan­dal, lar­ce­ny, fraud and cor­rup­tion.”

The’ at­tor­ney’s ar­gu­ments in­clud­ed:

• Cum­mings cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that the mat­ters com­plained of are false. Pri­or to en­ter­ing in­to pol­i­tics, he op­er­at­ed as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of sev­er­al busi­ness­es owned by his fam­i­ly which are well es­tab­lished and have con­duct­ed busi­ness both in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor in a most trans­par­ent and re­spon­si­ble man­ner, con­trary to the claim in the re­port of un­scrupu­lous busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

• Cum­mings’ good name and rep­u­ta­tion have been tar­nished and em­bar­rass­ment caused by the defam­a­to­ry state­ments made.

• The doc­u­ment con­tained cer­tain mark­ings which in­di­cat­ed it was se­cret.

• Nei­ther Lutch­me­di­al nor Cum­mings know the cir­cum­stances of the doc­u­ment; or if it rep­re­sents any fi­nal find­ing of fact which can be re­lied on by any­one.

• Cum­mings has rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to any in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing done by TTPS. No charges have been brought against him and “the to­tal­i­ty of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion” hadn’t been prof­fered by any­one, in­clud­ing TTPS. There­fore, the re­port “does not lay in any fac­tu­al con­text where a fair as­sess­ment of its ac­cu­ra­cy can be in­ferred.”

• The man­ner in which the in­for­ma­tion was dis­closed was in­con­sis­tent with the tenor of the doc­u­ment which spoke of al­le­ga­tions be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed while Lutch­me­di­al “will­ful­ly pre­sent­ed it as find­ings of fact.

• There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or rea­son­able ex­cuse to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion and a du­ty was owed to treat the in­for­ma­tion as con­fi­den­tial.

* Lutch­me­di­al knew/ought to have known that her state­ments and the re­port dis­closed high­ly sen­si­tive and con­fi­den­tial inf01ma­tion which Cum­mings rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed to be kept pri­vate.

* Reck­less dis­sem­i­na­tion of such in­for­ma­tion to the gen­er­al pub­lic has put the life of him­self and his fam­i­ly at risk to acts of vi­o­lence from per­sons po­ten­tial­ly out­raged by the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion (sic) by him and the al­le­ga­tion which she pre­sent­ed as fact, that he has deal­ings with a re­put­ed drug deal­er and “gang” leader.

* The claim that Cum­mings “mo­bilis­es res­i­dents for his own means” is an ab­solute un­truth. Nei­ther he nor any fam­i­ly mem­ber had any in­ter­est/con­nec­tion with the prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed at Ibis Av­enue, Point Lisas.

SEE AL­SO: HDC mum on do­ing busi­ness with Cum­mings

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