The Full Court through Justice Fidela Corbin-Lincoln and Justice Nicola Pierre, has dismissed an Appeal by Social Media commentator, Mikhail Rodrigues known as the ‘Guyanese Critic”, to have a $22.5M defamation judgement against him overturned.

The High Court judgment remains in place, and Rodrigues will now have to pay Court costs.

Last year, Justice Nigel Niles, had ordered that Rodrigues and his “They Break News” pay damages totaling $22.5 million along with punitive damages of $3.5 million to Azruddin and Nazar Mohameds for defamation. But Rodrigues had criticized the judgment and opted to appeal.

The Full Court has now affirmed the decision of Justice Niles.

In his pleadings to the Court, ‘Critic’ said that Justice Niles had erred in law and misapplied the relevant legal principles and that he failed to apply the proper legal principles relevant to the consideration of an extension of time for a Defendant to file.

He also told that Court that Justice Niles, erred in law and placed an unbalanced emphasis on the procedural rules without adequately considering or applying the relevant principles as it relates to the overriding objective of determining cases fairly and on the merits.

But the Full Court found that Justice Niles had correctly applied the law.

“Having considered the decision of the learned trial judge, the grounds of appeal and the submissions I find that the appeal should be dismissed since the learned trial judge did not err in refusing to set aside the judgment in default. The learned trial judge considered and correctly applied the criteria set out in CPR12.03 with respect to setting aside a judgment in default. Specifically, I do not find that the learned trial judge erred in his finding that the explanation provided for failing to file the defence was not reasonable and, more importantly in my view, that the defence as set out in the draft defence had no real prospect of success,” the full court said in a detailed written Judgement.

The Judges stated that the explanation and application of law by the Justice Niles, is sufficient to sustain his decision and dismissed the Appeal of the “Guyanese Critic”.

“There is no basis upon which the court ought to disturb the learned trial judge’s exercise of his discretion not to set aside the default judgement since he did not make a mistake of law, disregard principle, misapprehend the facts, take into account irrelevant material, ignore relevant material or come to a decision which is ‘outside the generous ambit within which reasonable disagreement is possible”,” the Justices wrote.

They also found that the criteria to award costs and the default judgment regime were properly applied. 

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