FORMER Head of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington, was on Friday awarded $3.6 million in damages after he won another set of defamation lawsuits against the Kaieteur News for words that were published in its ‘Dem Boys Seh’ column.

The damages in the claims filed by Brassington through his attorney, Senior Counsel Timothy Jonas, against the Kaieteur News’ publisher, Glenn Lall, was handed down by High Court Judge Justice Fidela Corbin-Lincoln.

In his lawsuit, Brassington, who now heads the Gas-to-Shore Taskforce, complained that in 2014 the KN published in its “Dem boys seh” column, words pertaining to him that sullied his reputation.

During the trial, KN’s attorney Christopher Thompson had informed the court that given the multiplicity of claims and the findings made in other proceedings, Lall would consent to judgment on liability with damages to be assessed.

Brassington’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 judge said in her ruling.

The judge said that bearing in mind that the objective of an award of damages in defamation is to compensate rather than penalize, she found that the previous award of damages for words of similar effect which were published in close proximity should operate as a form of mitigation of damages.

“This mitigating factor must of course be balanced against the fact that these are further publications of defamatory words which impute some form of criminality to the plaintiff and the further effect which it may have caused to the plaintiff’s standing and feelings,” the judge said.

Weighing all the aggravating and mitigating factors and having regard to the purpose of an award of damages, the judge awarded Brassington $900,000 in damages on each of his four suits – totalling $3.6M
Lall was also awarded a total of 450,000 in costs.

In 2021, Justice Navindra Singh awarded Brassington $10M in another lawsuit against Kaieteur News. The court found that the publication clearly attacked Brassington’s character, labelling him as a dishonest person that engages in fraudulent or criminal practices, without setting out, factually, any conduct from Brassington to justify such a comment.

Meanwhile, in 2020, Justice Fidela Corbin-Lincoln, in five separate judgements ordered Kaieteur News to pay approximately $18 million in damages to Brassington.