Coach Jones loses defamation case against player Cornwall

Is­sues with al­leged play­er in­dis­ci­pline must be dealt with in­side the lock­er room and not in pub­lic.

High Court Judge Joan Charles gave the ad­vice this week as she up­held a defama­tion case brought by T&T se­nior women’s na­tion­al team play­er Afiyah Corn­wall against for­mer head coach Ken­wyne Jones.

In her judg­ment, Jus­tice Charles found on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties that Jones de­famed Corn­wall while ad­dress­ing a press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the team’s nar­row de­feat in their last group game at the Con­ca­caf Women’s Cham­pi­onship in Ju­ly 2022.

Both Corn­wall and Jones de­clined to re­veal the ex­act com­pen­sa­tion award­ed by the judge for the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age suf­fered, with the for­mer cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons in a press re­lease is­sued by her at­tor­neys Deb­bie Ju­man and Lana Chu­ni­lal of Ger­ard Raphael and As­so­ciates.

“Please note that the sum award­ed was sig­nif­i­cant,” the re­lease said.

The case re­lat­ed to state­ments Jones made while de­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to ex­clude Corn­wall and an­oth­er key play­er from the squad. He re­port­ed­ly claimed that she was left out due to al­leged pre­vi­ous dis­ci­pli­nary is­sues un­der oth­er coach­es.

The for­ward, who for­mer­ly cap­tained the Un­der-15, Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 na­tion­al teams and was 20 years old at the time, chal­lenged the ve­rac­i­ty of Jones’ claims about her dis­ci­pli­nary record. She filed the case af­ter he failed to is­sue a pub­lic apol­o­gy.

Jus­tice Charles found that Jones’ state­ments were defam­a­to­ry and had the po­ten­tial to af­fect her ca­reer as a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller.

She found that is­sues of a play­er’s dis­ci­pline or in­dis­ci­pline should be dealt with by the team’s man­age­ment in pri­vate.

Jus­tice Charles not­ed that those lis­ten­ing to the wide­ly pub­li­cised press con­fer­ence would have in­ferred that Corn­wall com­mit­ted se­ri­ous in­dis­ci­pline as op­posed to miss­ing a day of train­ing.

In re­ject­ing Jones’ de­fences of qual­i­fied priv­i­lege, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and fair com­ment, Jus­tice Charles found that as a for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller and se­nior team cap­tain with sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence and in­flu­ence, he should have been more cir­cum­spect be­fore mak­ing the state­ments which had a di­rect ef­fect on her rep­u­ta­tion.

She al­so not­ed that Jones, who has been coach­ing Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) since his de­par­ture from the women’s na­tion­al team, did not make any ef­forts to ver­i­fy the ac­cu­ra­cy of his state­ments over her pur­port­ed dis­ci­pli­nary record.

Jones was rep­re­sent­ed by An­drew La­m­ont and Gary Han­nays.