PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC -The Court docket of Enchantment Wednesday ordered the chief of the minor opposition, Progressive Empowerment Social gathering (PEP), Phillip Edward Alexander, to pay Finance Minister Colm Imbert greater than half 1,000,000 {dollars} (One TT greenback=US$0.16 cents) in damages for defamation.
Justices of Enchantment Mark Mohammed, Ronnie Boodoosingh, and Geoffrey Henderson upheld the ruling of Justice Jacqueline Wilson, describing it as “unassailable” after Imbert had sued Alexander over a collection of posts on Fb, revealed between February 29 and March 1, 2020.
The Court docket of Enchantment additionally ordered Alexander to pay Imbert’s prices in its unanimous ruling.
“Respectfully, we’re not persuaded that the trial choose materially erred by failing to undertake an impressionistic interpretation of the seven publications concerned (or) by failing to look at and consider every of the seven publications individually and other than the opposite publications and in remoted compartments,” the Court docket dominated.
It stated even when the decrease Court docket was incorrect in its conclusion, and whereas the Enchantment Court docket judges weren’t required to take a look at the matter afresh, their conclusion “could be the identical as that of the trial choose.”
Senior Counsel Russell Martineau, one of many attorneys representing Imbert, had described the Fb posts as “grossly defamatory” and that their inferential that means would lead an inexpensive reader to conclude that “one thing underhanded went on right here.”
“They weren’t simply dangerous or hurtful statements however steered prison conduct…These are severe allegations to make of the Minister of Finance. What impression would the cheap reader get?”
Martineau stated the posts have been based mostly on a “false presumption” concerning buying a car, including, “However this was not so.”
The lawyer stated a constitutional proper to privateness existed and that “folks’s reputations are important.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a minister. You must respect folks’s privateness. There’s a line. This was not attainable. It was greater than that. It’s the man’s status that’s being tarnished.”
The Court docket of Enchantment stated there was “compelling justification” to look at the seven postings collectively moderately than individually, as Alexander’s lawyer, Gregory Armorer, argued.
“Armorer’s submissions are respectfully a extremely technical one, which can not stand up to scrutiny towards the backdrop of the precise and precise context of this case.”
The judges stated that in deciding the enchantment, they may not have a look at the posts individually due to the “very slender window concerned” – roughly 24 hours – the medium used and the “manifest interrelation of the posts.
“Even when required to view the posts individually, most of them, in our view, would carry defamatory that means.”
Following the 2023 Excessive Court docket ruling, Imbert posted on X that he had acquired a TT$525,000 award for defamation towards Alexander.
“He had falsely alleged that I bought an unique Swedish sports activities automotive for US$2M utilizing foreign exchange that I obtained by corrupt means or by abusing my workplace because the MOF,” Imbert wrote.
