DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Con­trac­tor and so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer Shane Ma­habirs­ingh has lost his defama­tion law­suit against an at­tor­ney, who he blamed for his le­gal de­feat in a law­suit with a for­mer cus­tomer.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out Ma­habirs­ingh's case against at­tor­ney Is­sa Jones.

The law­suit in­volv­ing Ma­habirs­ingh and Jones stemmed from a sep­a­rate defama­tion law­suit brought by Jones' clients against Ma­habirs­ingh.

In that case, Jones' clients claimed that Ma­habirs­ingh de­famed them in a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts on his pop­u­lar page Bil­da Boyz Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

Jones' clients en­tered in­to a con­tract with Ma­habirs­ingh and his com­pa­ny for con­struc­tion ser­vices. Af­ter they ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract with­out it be­ing com­plet­ed, the cou­ple pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion.

They al­leged that Ma­habirs­ingh utilised his Face­book page to tar­nish their rep­u­ta­tions af­ter their case was filed.

The cou­ple suc­cess­ful­ly ob­tained a de­fault judg­ment in the defama­tion case af­ter Ma­habirs­ingh failed to at­tend a hear­ing.

Ma­habirs­ingh then suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to have the de­fault judg­ment against him and his com­pa­ny set aside. That case is still pend­ing

In his sub­se­quent law­suit against Jones, Ma­habirs­ingh al­leged that Jones wrong­ly claimed that he had served the case and in­formed him of the date of the hear­ing to ob­tain the de­fault judg­ment.

In ap­ply­ing to strike out the case be­fore it went to tri­al, Jones' lawyer Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai claimed that Ma­habirs­ingh had no ba­sis to pur­sue the case.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad agreed.

"It is ev­i­dent that the words com­plained of in the af­fi­davit are not defam­a­to­ry as the af­fi­davit mere­ly re­cit­ed the cir­cum­stances rel­a­tive to ser­vice as was told to the at­tor­ney by the process serv­er," Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said he re­spect­ed the fact that Ma­habirs­ingh sought to rep­re­sent him­self in his law­suit, he said that he was con­strained to de­ter­mine the case based on the law and op­er­a­tive facts.

Stat­ing that Ma­habirs­ingh clear­ly filed the case with­out seek­ing prop­er le­gal ad­vice, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: "Se­ri­ous thought should al­ways be giv­en be­fore one de­cides to ap­proach the Court in per­son as lawyers play a crit­i­cal role and their val­ue and ad­vice should not be dis­re­gard­ed.

"Just as one would not typ­i­cal­ly op­er­ate up­on one's self if there was a med­ical is­sue, so too cit­i­zens should ex­er­cise cau­tion and avoid as best as pos­si­ble from ap­proach­ing the court with­out the ben­e­fit of le­gal guid­ance," he added.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered Ma­habirs­ingh to pay Jones $10,650 in le­gal costs for his failed case.

Jones was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Chelsea Ed­wards.