Basil Williams to compensate AG $10M by court order
Former Attorney General Basil Williams, SC must pay his successor, Anil Nandlall, SC $10M in damages for defamation, along with $1.6M in court costs, a High Court Judge has ruled.
In a judgement delivered on Friday, High Court Judge Priya Sewnarine-Beharry found that Williams attacked Nandlall’s reputation and professional standing when he made defamatory statements in which he accused him of stealing law books from the State.
Nandlall, in the defamation trial, had maintained that when he was appointed Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs in 2011, he requested that as a condition of his service, that the government take over payment arrangements which he had with LexisNexis UK in relation to the Commonwealth Law Reports during his time in office.
These terms and conditions were agreed to by then President Donald Ramotar and were made part of Nandlall’s terms of employment, resulting in him receiving 14 volumes of the Commonwealth Law Reports under this arrangement, court documents have revealed.
When the APNU/AFC Coalition took over government in 2015, Nandlall briefed Williams, on the arrangement he had with the government. However, through press reports, he learnt that Williams had commissioned a special audit into the Law Reports.
“During the course of the investigation, the Auditor General contacted [Nandlall] for a response and later submitted his findings in a report in January 2016. This report did not implicate either [Nandlall] or the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Legal Affairs in any wrongdoing,” Justice Sewnarine-Beharry said in her judgement delivered via email.
Despite this, the Judge said that whenever Nandlall, a critic of Williams in the public domain, was publicly critical of him, the latter would threaten to embarrass him by making the law report issue contentious and publicly alleged that he was implicated in some law books scandal.
“This caused [Nandlall] to issue a public statement disclosing that the law reports were a condition of his service,” the Judge wrote in her decision. In his defence, the Judge said Williams relied on the defence of justification knowing that he could not prove that his statements were true. She said that the former Attorney General also insisted on pursuing the defence of fair comment although there was no factual basis for such a defence.
In assessing damages, the High Court Judge, among other things, considered that Williams’ defamatory statements were made during a press conference which was covered by the National Communications Network (NCN), other television statements in Guyana and was live stream on Facebook and on the internet by several internet-generated news agencies.
Additionally, she also took into consideration Williams’ failure to apologise or publish and apology to Nandlall. In the circumstances, Justice Sewnarine-Beharry issued an order awarding damages in the sum of $10M for defamation to Nandlall against Williams.
Interest on the said sum was awarded at a rate of six per cent per annum from April 4, 2017 to June 29, 2023 and four per cent per annum thereafter, until the sum is fully paid.
Costs were awarded to the Attorney General in the sum of $1,650,000, and has to be paid by August 18. Nandlall filed the lawsuit against Williams in April 2017, and was represented by Darshan Ramdhani, KC and Rajendra Jaigobin. Williams represented himself.
In 2017, a charge for the offence of larceny by bailee was filed against Nandlall who was accused of fraudulently converting the law books to his own use when he was Attorney General under the previous PPP government which was voted out of office in May 2015.
The allegation had alleged that between May 8, 2015 and May 29, 2015, while being the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs and having 14 law reports valued at $2.3M belonging to the Legal Affairs Ministry, he fraudulently converted them to his own use.
However, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Shalimar Ali-Hack, SC discontinued the charge against him in October 2020, a little over two months after the PPP returned to office. Nandlall had always professed his innocence.
