A so­cial me­dia user will have to fork out al­most $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chief ex­ec­u­tive Davlin Thomas for defama­tion.

Naresh Siewah was or­dered to pay the com­pen­sa­tion in late Sep­tem­ber, last year, as High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed up­held Thomas’ case over 14 defam­a­to­ry state­ments, which were post­ed on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms be­tween March and June 2020.

Siewah chal­lenged the out­come and sought a stay, which pre­vent­ed him from pay­ing the com­pen­sa­tion un­til his ap­peal was de­ter­mined.

For­mer Ap­pel­late Judge Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion in March be­fore she re­tired.

On Tues­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, Mal­colm Holdip and Car­la Brown-An­toine re­viewed their for­mer col­league’s de­ci­sion and af­firmed it.

Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er, who de­liv­ered the pan­el’s de­ci­sion, not­ed that Siewah did not prove that he had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess in his pend­ing ap­peal.

Stat­ing that Siewah was main­ly chal­leng­ing find­ings of fact made by Jus­tice Mo­hammed af­ter con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence, she said: “It is well es­tab­lished that the Court of Ap­peal is very slow to over­turn find­ings of fact.”

She al­so dis­missed Siewah’s claim that he would be “fi­nan­cial­ly ru­ined” if he was forced to pay the com­pen­sa­tion.

“Clear­ly he is not wealthy but he has as­sets that can be liq­ui­dat­ed. He is not go­ing to be ren­dered bank­rupt if he is forced to pay,” Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er said.

Thomas, who al­so serves as deputy chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), sued Siewah over the posts, which were pub­lished on his per­son­al Face­book page as well as on the group pages of “Trin­bago­Lives­Mat­ter” and “THE VOICE OF TnT 99%”.

In the law­suit, Thomas claimed that he suf­fered shame and em­bar­rass­ment based on the false, dis­parag­ing and ma­li­cious state­ments.

When Thomas’ lawyers Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai and Jen­nifer Farah-Tull ini­tial­ly wrote to Siewah threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion, he re­moved the posts and wrote back beg­ging for for­give­ness.

He added he was un­em­ployed and could not pay com­pen­sa­tion.

De­spite his ad­mis­sion, when Siewah even­tu­al­ly re­tained a lawyer to de­fend the case, he claimed that he was not re­spon­si­ble for most of the posts as his ac­count had been hacked for sev­er­al months.

In up­hold­ing the case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that Siewah’s state­ments could have led read­ers to wrong­ly form the view that Thomas was cor­rupt and mis­man­aged pub­lic funds.

While Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that some of the ques­tions raised by Siewah in his post were in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est, she ruled that cer­tain state­ments made by him trans­formed them (the posts) in­to an un­jus­ti­fied per­son­al at­tack on Thomas.

“The tone in all these posts was in­sin­cere, pes­simistic, sen­sa­tion­al and scan­dalous,” she said.

She point­ed out the defam­a­to­ry words were par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious as they were made dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and four months be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion.

She sug­gest­ed that Siewah could have raised the con­cerns di­rect­ly with Thomas, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh or the NCRHA board.

“How­ev­er, the choice of the words used by the De­fen­dant in the defam­a­to­ry posts were de­lib­er­ate, ma­li­cious and in­tend­ed to in­jure the Claimant as CEO of the NCRHA, and in his oth­er pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al ac­tiv­i­ties,” she said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $800,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $100,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages. Siewah was al­so or­dered to pay the al­most $100,000 in le­gal costs in­curred by Thomas in pur­su­ing the case.

While a date is yet to be set for the sub­stan­tive ap­peal, De­cem­ber 10 has been re­served by Jus­tice Mo­hammed for dis­cus­sions over the sale of a prop­er­ty owned by Siewah to pay the debt.

Siewah was rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Leon Kalicha­ran.