-ordered to pay $250,000 in costs
Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran has lost his defamation lawsuit against Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, with the High Court ruling that Jagdeo had established the substantial truth of the statements at the centre of the case.
Justice Peter Hugh, in a judgment delivered yesterday, dismissed Goolsarran’s claim and ordered him to pay $250,000 in costs to Jagdeo, citing the nature of the matter and the length of the proceedings.
Jagdeo did not testify in this case. Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC testified on his behalf.
The case arose from statements made by Jagdeo at a People’s Progressive Party press conference at Freedom House on March 23, 2023, and at a political rally at Port Mourant on March 26, 2023.
Goolsarran is actively considering an appeal of the judgment. His lawyers noted in a statement last evening that the Court found Jagdeo’s statements defamatory of their client and struck out his defences of fair comment and qualified privilege for want of proper pleading.
“Yet it upheld his defence of justification – a defence supported not by Mr. Jagdeo, who did not enter the witness box and was never cross-examined, but by the testimony of Mr. Anil Nandlall, the country’s Attorney General, who gave evidence on behalf of Jagdeo”.
Goolsarran had claimed that the statements damaged his reputation by suggesting that he lacked integrity in the performance of his duties as Auditor General and that he was politically partisan and selective in his criticism of government conduct.
Justice Hugh found that the statements were indeed capable of carrying a defamatory meaning and that an ordinary, reasonable and intelligent Guyanese would understand them as lowering Goolsarran in the estimation of right-thinking members of society.
However, the judge found that this did not mean Jagdeo was liable for defamation.
The first statement concerned Goolsarran’s tenure in the Audit Office during a period when audited public accounts were not produced, his continued receipt of a salary and his failure to resign.
The court found that Goolsarran’s own evidence substantially confirmed the factual assertions relied upon by Jagdeo.
Justice Hugh noted that Goolsarran admitted during cross-examination that he worked in the Audit Office during the relevant period, that no audited accounts were produced for several years, that he did not resign and that he continued receiving his salary.
The judge acknowledged Goolsarran’s explanation for why the accounts were not produced, but found that those explanations did not invalidate the truth of the underlying facts.
Justice Hugh said the “sting” of the first allegation was that Goolsarran lacked integrity, illustrated by his continued tenure and salary collection during a decade in which no audited reports were produced and his failure to resign.
On the second statement, concerning Goolsarran’s alleged association with the AFC and his alleged silence on corruption during the coalition’s tenure, the judge found that Jagdeo had established a substantial factual basis for the allegation.
The court specifically found that political association did not necessarily have to be demonstrated through formal, card-carrying membership of the AFC. Evidence that Goolsarran’s son was associated with the party, that he was represented by the AFC chairman and that he benefited from sole-sourced contracts awarded under the former government was considered sufficient to establish a substantial basis for the allegation.
Justice Hugh stressed, however, that the sting of that allegation did not lie simply in Goolsarran’s alleged association with the AFC, but in the suggestion that he could not speak about corruption during the coalition’s tenure.
The judge ultimately found that the underlying facts relied upon by Jagdeo were substantially true, including Goolsarran’s tenure, the absence of audited reports during the relevant period, his failure to resign, receipt of salary and government auditing contracts that were not awarded through open tender, as well as the evidence concerning his association with the AFC.
Although Jagdeo succeeded in his defence of justification, Justice Hugh separately struck out his defences of fair comment and qualified privilege.
The judge found that those defences had not been properly pleaded in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules.
In relation to fair comment, the court found that Jagdeo had not specifically identified the defamatory meaning he sought to defend as comment or sufficiently particularised the facts upon which the comments were based. That defence was therefore struck out.
The qualified privilege defence was also struck out because the pleadings did not sufficiently identify the circumstances giving rise to the alleged privilege.
Those failures, however, did not affect the final outcome because the successful justification defence was sufficient to dispose of the case.
The court therefore dismissed Goolsarran’s claim and ordered him to pay Jagdeo $250,000 in costs
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