High Court throws out Sir Clive Lloyd’s lawsuit against Chronicle

HIGH Court Judge, Navindra Singh, has thrown out the lawsuit filed by Former West Indies captain Sir Clive Lloyd against the Guyana Chronicle for defamation, finding that the application was “frivolous and a gross waste of judicial time.”
In his application, Sir Clive claimed that the newspaper attributed to him disparaging comments made about all-rounder Jason Holder, himself now a former West Indies captain.
The article titled, ‘Holder has outlived his usefulness in the position, says Lloyd’, was published on March 13, 2021, over the byline of Rajiv Bisnauth. The newspaper had also apologised for its publication of the story.

Lloyd has contended that the article made him out to be a person who is intemperate, hostile, mean-spirited, unfriendly, disloyal, disrespectful, malevolent, and unduly intrusive into the affairs of West Indies cricket.
Besides the facts stated above, it must be noted that the article published by the Chronicle was based on an apparent misinterpretation by its former sports writer, Rajiv Bisnauth, of an article he read on the World Wide Web.

That article, by Earl Best, was apparently based on a call made by Sir Clive to a call-in programme called “Mason & Guest” where a discussion was ongoing and included the fact that the West Indies cricket team had just defeated Bangladesh in a test series where another player, Kraigg Braithwaite, was the captain, where upon the Claimant was asked his opinion about whether Jason Holder should be replaced by Braithwaite as captain of the team.
In the course of his comments, in answering the question, the Claimant stated that he played a part in getting Holder as captain. He also stated; “It’s obvious that Kraig would be slightly ahead of Jason… And I’m sure Jason is not the guy who will say, oh, you know, I’ve got a bad deal or a raw deal.”
Justice Singh found that the words are incapable of being defamatory of Holder.

He explained that the words, whether uttered by the Claimant or not, simply conveyed the view that Holder was no longer the best option to be captain of the West Indies cricket team and it was based on the fact that Braithwaite had just led the team successfully in a test series against Bangladesh.
“It is indisputable that both statements convey the same view, that Holder was no longer an automatic choice for the role of captain; in fact, the actual words spoken by the claimant are more likely to be interpreted to mean that he preferred Braithwaite to Holder than the words published. This is important because it seems that the Claimant’s concern is that the language attributed to him is intemperate, hostile and unfriendly.

“The Claimant acknowledged that he ‘played a part in getting Jason as captain’ and though the remaining words may be an exaggerated statement of his actual opinion, that is to say, his opinion was that Holder was not an automatic choice as captain as opposed to Holder should no longer be a choice for captain, it does not amount to defamation of the Claimant’s character,” Justice Singh said in his ruling.

Applying common sense to the facts and law as stated, the Judge found that the words published and complained of are incapable of being defamatory or bringing Sir Clive’s character into disrepute. Further, the misquoting of the Claimant is not actionable, under these facts, as defamation. In addition, Sir Clive has failed or in fact not attempted to prove that he suffered any damage or loss as a result of the publication.

“The suit was frivolous and a gross waste of judicial resources,” the judge said as he ordered Lloyd to pay $750,000 in cost before November 30, 2023.