April 27 set for ruling in Granger’s challenge to Justice Singh hearing his $2.6B lawsuit against Nascimento, three newspapers

Feb 03, 2023 Court Stories, Features / Columnists, News

Kaieteur News – Full Court on Thursday heard lawyers in the appeal case by which former President David Granger challenged the decision of High Court Justice Navindra Singh not to recuse himself from his libel suit.

Granger had filed a lawsuit against Public Relations Consultant, Kit Nasimento and three newspapers claiming $2.6 billion for libel. Kashir Khan, an attorney- at-law, for Kit Nasimento found a difficulty with Granger’s appeal to the Full Court, noting that the former President is seeking to decide which judge should try his case without a viable or legally acceptable reason. The lawyer argued that for the court to take this course of action and have a judge remove himself from the matter there must be “reasonable apprehension.”

Justice Damone Young

Khan stressed this would have given Granger’s application to challenge the judge’s decision not to recuse himself some merit. “There is clearly no legal basis for this objection,” the lawyer argued. He said that the court cannot afford to have litigants “pick and choose” which judge should hear their case when it’s operating on barely 50 percent of judicial strength owing to the lack of judges. “It is no secret that there is a shortage of judges…” Khan said in his submission to the court.

In his submission, Attorney for Granger, Roysdale Forde noted that the application is viable in that Justice Singh failed to grant his client a fair hearing 0n his request for him to recuse himself from hearing the case. After hearing both sides on the issue, Full Court Justices Damon Young and Gino Persaud scheduled April 27, at 1:30 pm to deliver their decision in the matter. As such, the case which was scheduled to continue before Justice Singh on February 13 and February 14 will be deferred until the court makes its determination in April.

Last June the former President Granger stated that he did not want Justice Singh to conduct a pre-trial review (PTR) into the matter, and to also not preside over the trial. He wrote a letter to the judge. At the time, Justice Singh said that while in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) he could understand why the Claimant is objecting to him conducting the PTR, no basis had been provided for why he should not conduct the trial.

Justice Gino Persaud

Following discussions with Senior Counsel Forde who represents Granger and other counsel in the matter, however, the decision was taken that the PTR would be waived in accordance with the CPR, as the issues which were identified to be canvassed under the PTR are properly to be resolved at trial. The judge pointed out that a PTR is really concerned with issues surrounding potential settlement and case management protocols, but that what had been identified as PTR issues in the claim, are really evidentiary issues which are properly to be resolved at trial.

Granger’s $2.6 billion lawsuit is aimed at Stabroek News, Kaieteur News and the Guyana Times, which he says have all besmirched his character through letters which they published by communications specialist Christopher ‘Kit’ Nascimento. In his action, Granger said that Nascimento accused him of attempting to defy the will of the people in the March 2nd, 2020 Elections. The Former President has said that the statements, which he described as libelous by Nascimento, were published by the Guyana Times on May 23rd of 2020, both in its print and online versions.