Court throws out Roxanne Myers’ defamation claim against News Room

Former Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers has been ordered to pay the News Room and Attorney-at-Law Sanjeev Datadin $500,000 each in costs on or before September 12, 2024 after the claims she filed back in 2020 for defamation were thrown out in the High Court.

Myers instituted the claim against the defendants on March 4, 2021 and thereafter filed an amended claim on June 1, 2021, claiming damages for defamation, specifically, for statements made by Datadin during an interview with the News Room on March 6, 2020.

The ruling was delivered by Justice Navindra Singh last Monday and lawyers Natasha Vieira and Abhimanyu Dev represented the News Room, while Eusi Anderson represented Myers.

Myers said Datadin uttered the following statements which she contended were defamatory:

“The Deputy CEO has been saying that no one is allowed in to serve any orders. II. The DCEO is still refusing to let anyone into the building and specifically refusing to allow the Marshal in to serve.”

The Defendants contended that such statements were factual and constituted fair comments since they were aimed at addressing matters of public interest. So on January 25, News Room filed an Application requesting that the Court determine whether the statements complained of were in fact defamatory.

Datadin pleaded the defence of justification, more accurately described as the defence of truth, with respect to the statements, setting out specific facts. He contended that the information relayed in the statements were truthful. In considering the defence of justification/truth, the only issue was whether the words complained of were substantially true.

In her reply, Myers, though issuing a general denial of the Statement of Defence, did not specifically deny the allegations of facts nor dispute the circumstances pleaded by Datadin.

She did not state the facts upon which she relied to rebut Datadin’s contentions, but instead simply posited that the elements of all the defences raised by him cannot be proved.

Lawyers for News Room, Vieira and Dev, made an application for the defamatory meaning of the words claimed to be offensive, and contented that they were not defamation. The Court sided with their argument. Apart from the pleadings of Datadin, during the interview, it could have been seen that he provided explicit details as to when and where he was saying that Myers was refusing to allow anyone into the building and he further named the persons who were present, stating clearly that he was present and heard her utter words to that effect.

As such, the Court found that the defence of truth was established by Datadin and not rebutted with respect to the statements. Consequently, the Court also found that the defences have also been established in favour of the News Room.