Winston Brassington secures further wins in cases against Kaieteur News

…High Court awards more damages for each claim

Former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington, has secured further wins in his libel suits against the National Media & Publishing Co. Limited, publishers of the Kaieteur News, and against Adam Harris, the then Editor-in-Chief of the Kaieteur News.

According to the court documents, High Court Judge Fidela Corbin-Lincoln weighed all the “aggravating and mitigating factors” in making her decision, and awarded damages in the sum of $900,000 for each of the actions. She also awarded costs in the sum of $150,000 in one of the actions and $100,000 in each of the other three claims, which allege that Kaieteur News committed libel against Brassington in a series of publications made between February and April 2014.
“The plaintiff’s evidence is that he was made the subject of ridicule and suspicion as a result of this and other publications, and that his friends would telephone him about the publications. The plaintiff gave evidence with respect to what his children reported to him was allegedly being said by their school mates and teachers. There is no evidence that the plaintiff suffered psychological trauma, mental anguish, or social loss as a result of the publication,” the court documents state.

According to the ruling, the alleged acts of libel committed by Kaieteur News are serious, as they impute “some form of criminality and corruption”. There is also no evidence that the defendants apologized or issued a retraction for the libel. According to the Judge, Brassington stated that the defendants did not communicate with him prior to the publication, or requested a comment or response to the accusations.
“In determining the quantum of damages, I have taken all the facts of these cases into consideration, and all the circumstances, including that: (a) the plaintiff filed several actions contemporaneously, with these actions based on publications by the defendants which occurred within days, weeks and months of these publications; (b) in those actions, the plaintiff, relying on essentially the same evidence as he does in these actions, recovered damages in respect of defamatory words, the effect of which was to impute dishonesty and criminality to the Plaintiff.”
During the court case, the lawyer for Kaieteur News publisher Glenn Lall had argued that Brassington had already received compensation for previous libel suits filed against Kaieteur News, and the court should not award further damages. However, Timothy Jonas, SC., who represented Brassington, urged the court to consider the damage done to Brassington’s reputation by the publications.
According to the ruling, however, previous awards for damages in other libel cases Brassington had filed act as a form of mitigation of damages. The Judge noted that the objective of awarding damages in defamation is to compensate, rather than penalise.

“Weighing all the aggravating and mitigating factors, and having regard to the purpose of an award of damages, the awards already made, and the fact that libel is actionable per se, I assess damages in each action in the sum of $900,000. These claims do not fall under the Civil Procedure Rules 2016.”
In 2020, Brassington won his defamation cases against Kaieteur News and its former Editor-in-Chief over articles published. The High Court awarded him $18 million in damages, along with $220,000 in court costs.
During 2014, in its ‘Dem Boys Seh’ column, Kaieteur News, owned by Glen Lall, published several articles defaming Brassington, who is now the Head of Guyana’s Gas-to-Energy Taskforce. (G3)