Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal have been giv­en a lit­tle over a month to file a de­fence to a defama­tion law­suit brought by a busi­ness­man and two of his com­pa­nies.

Mooni­lal re­ceived the ex­ten­sion as the law­suit brought by James Ker­ron Rose, Tril­lions Sys­tems Lim­it­ed, and Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Rose and the com­pa­nies’ lawyers, Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai and Mpule Williams, were ini­tial­ly seek­ing a de­fault judg­ment against Mooni­lal over his pre­vi­ous fail­ure to meet dead­lines for the fil­ing of his de­fence.

How­ev­er, the ap­pli­ca­tion was with­drawn af­ter Mooni­lal’s lawyer, Jagdeo Singh, made sub­mis­sions for an ex­ten­sion be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad.

Mooni­lal’s lawyers will now have un­til June 16 to file his de­fence. If the ex­tend­ed dead­line is not met, the case would pro­ceed as un­de­fend­ed.

The law­suit cen­tres around com­ments made by Mooni­lal while ad­dress­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) press brief­ing in Sep­tem­ber last year.

While the al­le­ga­tions can­not be re­peat­ed, as they may sub­se­quent­ly be found to be defam­a­to­ry, Mooni­lal es­sen­tial­ly al­leged that one of the com­pa­nies en­gaged in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, while the oth­er al­leged­ly re­ceived a con­tract from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to con­struct box drains.

Mooni­lal al­so claimed that Rose was a fea­tured speak­er at an event held at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters.

In their court fil­ings, Rose and the com­pa­nies claimed that Mooni­lal dis­played a pho­to of a man, whom he claimed to be Rose.

They not­ed that Mooni­lal sub­se­quent­ly ad­mit­ted that the pho­to­graph was, in fact, that of a so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer who has a name sim­i­lar to Rose.

“The Claimants de­ny these al­le­ga­tions made by the De­fen­dant as be­ing self-serv­ing, false, un­found­ed, dis­parag­ing, in­flam­ma­to­ry, ma­li­cious, defam­a­to­ry, and li­bel­lous,” they said, as they not­ed that Mooni­lal did not seek a re­sponse from Rose or the com­pa­nies be­fore mak­ing the al­le­ga­tions.

They al­so not­ed that the brief­ing was viewed by over 7,000 so­cial me­dia view­ers and was shared 95 times.

Stat­ing that the state­ments caused Rose and the com­pa­nies se­ri­ous em­bar­rass­ment, their lawyers said, “This has caused the claimants’ col­leagues, in­vestors and prospec­tive in­vestors to ques­tion the claimants’ busi­ness prac­tices and may have al­so had grasp the at­ten­tion of the claimants’ com­peti­tors to fur­ther draw these ad­verse in­fer­ences, which may in fact cause fi­nan­cial hard­ships to the claimants.”

“The Claimants have suf­fered much shame, dis­tress, anx­i­ety and em­bar­rass­ment due to the De­fen­dant’s posts/state­ments and the al­le­ga­tions con­tained there­in, as he was pub­licly named as a di­rec­tor of both com­pa­nies and fears for his safe­ty as a busi­ness­man,” they added.

Through the law­suit, the com­pa­nies and Rose are seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­ages and an in­junc­tion block­ing Mooni­lal from re­peat­ing the al­le­ga­tions.

They are al­so seek­ing an apol­o­gy and pub­lic re­trac­tion.