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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Judge sets aside default judgment against Black Stalin’s wife

by

3 days ago
20250704
Janet Calliste

Janet Calliste

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Mas­ter has set aside an over $300,000 de­fault judg­ment ob­tained against the wid­ow of five-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch Leroy “Black Stal­in” Cal­liste by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist for the unau­tho­rised use of a pho­to­graph of her late hus­band. 

On Tues­day, Mas­ter Wren­er­son Lochan up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Janet Cal­liste to ef­fec­tive­ly an­nul the judg­ment ob­tained against her by An­ge­lo Mar­celle ear­li­er this year. 

Mas­ter Lochan al­so or­dered Mar­celle to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by Cal­liste’s wife in pur­su­ing the pro­ce­dur­al ap­pli­ca­tion. 

The de­ci­sion means that the case will now have to pro­ceed to tri­al be­fore a High Court judge. 

Late last year, Mar­celle, trad­ing as Trini­razzi HD, sued Cal­liste’s wife af­ter the im­age he took of her hus­band at De Nu Pub in Wood­brook in 2011 ap­peared on pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al for a Black Stal­in-themed con­cert on Oc­to­ber 4. 

Mar­celle claimed that Cal­liste’s wife did not seek his per­mis­sion be­fore al­low­ing the pro­mot­er to use the pho­to­graph, which was pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished by the T&T News­day news­pa­per with his ap­proval. 

Al­though Mar­celle ob­ject­ed to the unau­tho­rised use of his pho­to­graph be­fore fil­ing the law­suit, the pho­to­graph was not re­moved from tele­vi­sion and so­cial me­dia ad­ver­tis­ing, and the con­cert was even­tu­al­ly held at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA). 

Mar­celle claimed over $360,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, which was based on his dai­ly fee for the use of an im­age on tele­vi­sion and so­cial me­dia. 

“The unau­tho­rised use of the claimant’s copy­right­ed work has caused the claimant to suf­fer loss,” his lawyers claimed.

In Feb­ru­ary, Mar­celle, through his at­tor­neys, Nigel Tran­coso and David Carter, ob­tained a de­fault judge­ment against Cal­liste’s wife af­ter she failed to make an ap­pear­ance in the case or file a de­fence. 

Over a month af­ter the court or­der was served on her, Cal­liste’s wife filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for the judg­ment to be set aside. 

In her court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, her lawyers, led by Ernest Koy­lass, SC, sought to ex­plain his client’s fail­ure to de­fend the law­suit. 

“The De­fen­dant is a 77-year-old wid­ow in un­cer­tain health, and her fail­ure to file an ap­pear­ance and lat­er de­fence was un­know­ing of the con­se­quence and not in­ten­tion­al,” her lawyers said. 

“The De­fen­dant is with­out means to af­ford an at­tor­ney-at-law and is re­liant on the gen­eros­i­ty and good­will of an at­tor­ney-at-law to as­sist her in tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to de­fend the claim,” they added. 

They al­so claimed that Mar­celle should not have been grant­ed the ex­act fig­ure claimed in his law­suit, as any com­pen­sa­tion should have been in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sessed by a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer. 

Cal­liste won his first Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle in 1979 with Caribbean Man (Caribbean Uni­ty) and Play One. 

He won three more ti­tles in 1985, 1987, and 1991 be­fore se­cur­ing his fi­nal crown in 1995 with In Time and Trib­ute to Sun­dar Popo. 

He died on De­cem­ber 28, 2022, at the age of 81. 


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