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.