Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The wid­ow of five-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch Leroy “Black Stal­in” Cal­liste is seek­ing to over­turn a de­fault judg­ment of over $300,000 ob­tained against her by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist for the unau­tho­rised use of a pho­to­graph of her late hus­band.

Late last year, An­ge­lo Mar­celle, trad­ing as Trini­razzi HD, sued Janet Cal­liste 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 per­mit­ting the use of the pho­to­graph, which was pub­lished by the T&T News­day news­pa­per with his ap­proval.

Al­though Mar­celle chal­lenged the po­si­tion 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 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 judg­ment against Cal­liste’s wife af­ter she failed to en­ter 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 lawyer, 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, and such should have been in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sessed by a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the ap­pli­ca­tion has been as­signed to High Court Mas­ter Wren­er­son Lochan, who is sched­uled to host a hear­ing on June 1.

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.