The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) challenging the amount of compensation it received in its radio licence case. The Maha Sabha and its affiliate company, Central Broadcasting Services Ltd, brought the appeal after they were awarded a little under $2 million in substantive damages for Government’s discrimination in granting the licence in September 2009. Justice Rajendra Narine, in a 21-page judgment delivered yesterday, said he could find no fault with the initial assessment. Appellate judges Gregory Smith and Maureen Rajnauth-Lee also sat on the panel.
The Maha Sabha first applied for a radio licence in September 2000. The application met all the necessary criteria and was not opposed by the Telecommunications Division. The organisation led evidence that two years after it applied, it learned that another company, Citadel Ltd, had been granted a licence, even though the Maha Sabha’s application preceded it. The group filed a constitutional motion alleging it had been the victim of discrimination by the State. In a judgment on February 5, 2004, Justice Carlton Best ruled there was unequal treatment in Central Broadcasting Services’ application in relation to Citadel Ltd. The matter was appealed and the Court of Appeal also found there was unequal treatment.
The Maha Sabha sought further redress at the Privy Council. On July 4, 2006, the Law Lords ruled that the State had discriminated against the Maha Sabha and its constitutional right to freedom of expression had been violated. The Privy Council ordered the State to pay damages for loss of earnings and to grant the licence to the Maha Sabha forthwith but the Maha Sabha was not awarded the licence until September 22 that year. The damages were assessed by Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh, who awarded the Maha Sabha $952,890 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in vindicatory damages, plus interest and incidentals.
In this appeal, the Appeal Court was asked to determine whether Boodoosingh’s assessment was “inordinately low or high.” The Maha Sabha claimed Boodoosingh erred in law when he calculated the damages for loss of earnings between 2002 and 2006, using a base figure of the radio station’s profit for its first year of operation, and when he replaced the station’s projected growth rates with more conservative estimates. The Appeal Court rejected both submissions.