In a judgment of the High Court, the Kaieteur News (KN) has been ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to former executive director of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) Winston Brassington, who had sued the newspaper for defamation.
In addition, KN has also been ordered to pay court costs in the sum of $450,000 altogether for the four, out of about a dozen actions Brassington brought against it back in 2014. To date, KN has had judgements awarded against it, in favour of Brassington, to the tune of almost $40 million.
In her assessment of damages in the four actions last Thursday, Justice Fidela Corbin-Lincoln said that among other things, she has had to specifically take into consideration that the plaintiff (Brassington), had filed several actions contemporaneously along with the four actions. She noted that the statements complained of in all the actions, occurred within days, weeks and months of each other, while underscoring the fact that the plaintiff in all the actions relied on essentially the same evidence.
Justice Corbin-Lincoln pointed out that Brassington had recovered damages in respect of those other actions, and further, that his evidence in the matters before her, did not disclose that he suffered any additional loss and damage over and above that which was occasioned from the other publications from which he has recovered damages. Against this background, and bearing in mind that the objective of an award of damages in defamation is to compensate rather than penalise, the judge said that the previous award of damages for words of similar effect which were published previously should operate as a form of mitigation of damages.
She did note, however, that this mitigating factor must be balanced against the fact that the further publications of defamatory words which impute some form of criminality to the plaintiff and the further effect which it may have caused to his standing and feelings. Weighing all the aggravating and mitigating factors, the judge awarded Brassington $900,000 in each of the four actions.
Meanwhile, as regards her assessment of costs, Justice Corbin-Lincoln said she also considered the fact that the pleadings and evidence in the actions were again essentially the same. She said she considered, too, the time spent in preparing for trial; though the defendant (KN) eventually opted out of going to trial, which did save judicial time and further costs.
In all the circumstances, the newspaper company was ordered to pay Brassington costs in the total of $450,000.
At a hearing back in April, attorneys for KN informed the court that given the multiplicity of claims and the findings made in other proceedings against the company, it would forgo a trial and instead consent to judgement on liability.
Brassington’s claim in all the actions had been that as a financial consultant operating his own consultancy business in Miami, Florida, he relies on his experience and reputation to attract clients. He said that following the publications made by the KN, his character was brought into disrepute as criminality and corruption were imputed against him while he served at the helm of NICIL.
Background
Back in November 2021, following various efforts by Brassington to garnish an almost $40 million in damages he had already won in judgments against KN, the newspaper had finally agreed to voluntarily pay off the outstanding balance of some $18 million.
Brassington by that time had already received some $20 million which he had garnished from a bank account belonging to KN through appointing a receiver to recover from the income and/or capital assets of the newspaper in order to satisfy judgments awarded.
Brassington has won a number of lawsuits against the KN for defamatory statements it published about him back in 2014.
In August 2021, he was awarded $2 million in damages, which was the lowest of the amounts he had been previously awarded in similar actions he brought against the newspaper, its publisher Glenn Lall and former editor Adam Harris. Then in February that same year, he was awarded $10 million and mere months before, in September of 2020, he was awarded over $18 million.
He had been awarded various amounts prior.
