Advertise With Us
About Us
Listen
Watch

Login

/

Subscribe

Home

News

Carnival

Business

Sports

E-Paper

Features

Opinion

Traffic Cameras

Life

Classifieds

Death Notices

Community

Real Estate

About Us

Contact Us

Home
News
Carnival
Sports
E-paper
Business
Classifieds
Other
Death Notices
Traffic Cameras
Covid-19
Features
Opinion
Games
Subscriptions
Real Estate

Judge: GML can report on CEPEP execs’ salaries

by

#meta[ag-author]
Derek Achong
20200917210701
20200918
CEPEP workers engaged in a coastal clean-up at Carat Shed Beach earlier this year.

CEPEP workers engaged in a coastal clean-up at Carat Shed Beach earlier this year.

Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has par­tial­ly re­moved an in­junc­tion block­ing this news­pa­per from con­tin­u­ing a se­ries of in­ves­tiga­tive re­ports in­to salary in­creas­es that were al­leged­ly paid to Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) Com­pa­ny Ltd chief ex­ec­u­tive Kei­th Ed­dy and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Nicole Gopauls­ingh.

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion on the in­junc­tion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran ruled Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor - Busi­ness Cur­tis Williams, who wrote the ar­ti­cles, had pro­vid­ed an ar­guable de­fence to the defama­tion claims lev­elled by the CEPEP duo and that a bal­ance of jus­tice re­quired pub­li­ca­tion.

“In the cir­cum­stances, the bal­ance must come down in favour of up­hold­ing the free­dom of ex­pres­sion and free­dom of the press,” Ram­cha­ran said.

In as­sess­ing Williams’ de­fence, Ram­cha­ran not­ed that he mere­ly de­ter­mined if it was ar­guable at the even­tu­al tri­al of the case and not whether it suc­ceed­ed or not.

Ram­cha­ran not­ed that the sub­ject of the ar­ti­cles was in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“I am of the view that the is­sue is at the very least pri­ma fa­cie of a pub­lic in­ter­est, as on the face of it, the pay­ment of monies and salaries by those em­ployed by a State en­ter­prise, who are paid by the tax­pay­er (as the claimants are) is in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” Ram­cha­ran said.

He al­so re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions that Williams did not prac­tice re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism by fail­ing to con­tact Gopauls­ingh pri­or to pub­li­ca­tion.

“It is to be not­ed that the law does not make seek­ing com­ment from the claimant a ne­ces­si­ty and it would be a ques­tion to be de­ter­mined on tri­al whether Williams ought to have sought com­ment from Gopauls­ingh in light of the in­for­ma­tion he had, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion he had with the chair­man and Ed­dy,” Ram­cha­ran said.

He al­so dis­missed claims from Gopauls­ingh that the re­ports were the re­sults of a con­spir­a­cy be­tween a group of her col­leagues, Guardian Me­dia and Williams.

“In fact, at present, there is no ev­i­dence from which the court could make a find­ing of mal­ice on the part of any of the de­fen­dants,” he said.

While Ram­cha­ran grant­ed per­mis­sion for this news­pa­per to re­store the on­line pub­li­ca­tion of the re­ports, he pre­vent­ed it from pub­lish­ing a mi­nor al­le­ga­tion that could not be proven. He al­so barred it from pub­lish­ing pho­tos or copies of doc­u­ments which ex­hib­it­ed the duo’s per­son­al in­for­ma­tion be­sides their com­pen­sa­tion pack­age in­for­ma­tion.

The duo sought the in­junc­tion af­ter the re­ports be­gan to be pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 6.

In the first ar­ti­cle, it was al­leged that the com­pa­ny’s board had ap­proved salary in­creas­es for the duo in No­vem­ber last year.

The com­pa­ny is­sued a re­lease in which it called for a re­trac­tion and claimed that the de­ci­sion was not fi­nalised, as ap­proval was need­ed from the HR Com­mit­tee and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO). Two days lat­er, an­oth­er ar­ti­cle was pub­lished al­leg­ing that a lit­tle over $200,000, rep­re­sent­ing their retroac­tive in­creas­es, was trans­ferred to the duo’s ac­counts.

CEPEP again is­sued a re­lease claim­ing that the pay­ments were due to an ac­count­ing er­ror and were sub­se­quent­ly re­versed.

The duo was rep­re­sent­ed by El­ton Prescott, SC, Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai, Is­sa Jones and Jen­nifer Farah-Tull.

Marc Camp­bell and An­dre Rud­der rep­re­sent­ed Guardian Me­dia, its man­ag­ing ed­i­tor Rose­marie Sant and Williams.


Click HERE to Login

Want FREE access to all our content? Sign up HERE!

Tagged in:

Responses

Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored

Trending

Acting CoP suspends officer in traffic warden viral video
Harewood-Christopher in pole position for CoP job
Cop captured in social media row with Traffic Warden suspended
Nine Vindra Naipaul-Coolman murder accused to receive $20M from State
State must pay $20m for failed Naipaul-Coolman case
President sends Erla Christopher's name to Parliament for CoP nominee debate
Highest-ranking name for new Police Commissioner delivered to President
Griffith silent on Kamla’s call for unity: PDP, Duke, some ex-UNC MPs not interested
Piarco records the lowest temperature in January in 10 years
US resident held with ammo in Piarco airport
Today's
Guardian
View
Subscribe

Publications

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Pain, power and poison...a review of Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

20230126132207
2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot poetry prize winner memorialises 'charismatic' father

20230126141654

Numbness in your feet?

20230123072450

Your walking gear matters!

20230116101944
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

News

Business

Sports

Life

Opinion

Tobago Today

Classifieds

Death Notices

Subscriptions

Real Estate

Categories

News
Business
Sports
Features
Opinion
Traffic Cameras
Death Notices

INFORMATION

About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Privacy Policy
Subscriptions
Terms of Services

Digital Media

The Big Board Company.
Real Estate
Classifieds

TELEVISION

CNC3 Television

RADIO

951 Remix
Sangeet 106.1 FM
Sky 99.5FM
Slam 100.5 FM
Vibe CT 105 FM
Mix 90.1 FM (Guyana)
Freedom 106.5 FM

About Us

Guardian Media is the premier provider of multimedia solutions and authoritative insight on news, politics, business, finance, sports, and current affairs. Our brand portfolio includes CNC3, Guardian, TBC Radio Network and The Big Board Company.

Contact us

Send us an e-mail here or call us at +1-(868)-225-4465

Follow us