PHILIPSBURG--Former managing director of NV GEBE William Brooks has lost his injunction against utility company GEBE and current chairman of its Supervisory Board Julius Lambert.
Brooks filed the injunction last month after Lambert made what Brooks considered disparaging remarks to the St. Kitts-Nevis Observer newspaper of October 17 about Brooks' tenure at GEBE, and had declined to rectify these statements.
Judge Ren� van Veen of the Court of First Instance ruled Wednesday that it could not be sufficiently ascertained that Lambert indeed had made the contested statements. The judge saw no reason to order a rectification and ordered Brooks to pay the cost of the legal proceedings, estimated at NAf. 1,000.
Brooks also had accused Lambert of making negative statements about him on Eddie Williams' radio show of October 30 on Radio Soualiga concerning a fraud case within GEBE. Based on the interview, a news item about the alleged fraud also appeared on St. Maarten Island Time website.
Brooks is the new Chief Executive Officer at St. Kitts Electricity Company. In the injunction, Brooks accused Lambert of breaching the non-disclosure clauses in the agreement that ended his tenure at GEBE before the scheduled expiration of his contract this month.
Brooks had also filed for damages to the tune of NAf. 25,000, and had requested a rectification of the derogatory statements in The Daily Herald, Observer and on the St. Maarten Island Time website.
In the contested newspaper article, under a headline reading that Brooks had been terminated for poor performance, Lambert was quoted as saying: "His contract was terminated really for poor performance. There were major problems with his management of GEBE. There was no control and the company was losing a lot of money."
Lambert also was quoted by the Observer as stating that GEBE had "lost millions and millions of dollars" under Brooks' tenure "due to inefficiencies in electricity and water distribution." He also said there had been no control of the billing system.
GEBE and Lambert stated that they had informed an Observer reporter about GEBE and its "poor performance" in general, not about Brooks' performance specifically.
Lambert said that when the reporter had asked specific questions about Brooks he had said he "did not wish to become involved." Lambert said it was regrettable the reporter had attributed certain remarks to GEBE and him, but that he could not be held accountable because he had not written the article or approved of its content.
The judge said it could not be ascertained that Lambert had indeed made the contested statements, because there was no tape recording of the interview and the reporter could not be heard as a witness in the summary proceedings. Because it could not be established that Lambert actually had made the contested statements, it would have gone too far to demand a rectification.
However, Judge van Veen added, Lambert would have been wise to end the conversation with the reporter after Brooks' name was mentioned.
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