And, in other news, back in January 2023, you met Andre Gray, a born Belizean touted as "The Godfather of internet inventions". He was even given the key to Belize city. And that prompted 7news to dig a little deeper and that's when we found that many of the achievements Gray claimed couldn't be verified by legitimate, established news sources.
Well, after that story, Gray through his brother, attorney Ian Gray, sued this station for defamation. Except, they didn't sue Tropical Vision Limited, but rather Channel 7's News Director, Jules Vasquez.
After months of case management, a decision was handed down today, where the suit was struck out. Vasquez's attorney, Hector Guerra, explained that, simply put, Gray was suing the wrong person.
Hector Guerra, Attorney
"One of the essential elements of defamation as you would know is that you have to sue the body, the natural person, the company, whoever it is, you have to sue the person that caused the statements to be published. From the beginning of this claim, we made it plain that you're suing the wrong person, that in fact the entity who caused the statements that were being complained of to be published was in fact a company called Tropical Vision Limited. So we alerted the court to that from early 2024 and on the heels of that, we applied for the case to be struck out. Despite having filed that application and having filed a defense to make that plain to the court and to Mr Gray over ten months would have elapsed and Mr Gray simply doubled down and said in fact he had the right person in front of the court and refused to fix his claim. As a result, he then proceeded and ultimately some days before the actual hearing in this matter, filed an application to substitute the defendant from Mr Vasquez to Tropical Vision Limited. But by the time he did that, defenses were in, applications to strike were already in, affidavit evidence proving that Channel 7 was in fact owned by Tropical Vision Limited the company were already in so ultimately it came up for hearing before Justice Tawanda and he had to make a ruling for the application on the strike out which was in front of him and which had been filed first in time and ultimately it's foundational, you can't sue the wrong person and that's what it boils down to."
"We're currently taking instructions on the matter but it's likely we will be waiting Mr Gray demanding that he pay the cost which our client has naturally had to incur to defend himself and that's added with the circumstances meaning he made it clear from the very beginning that you're suing the wrong person and Mr Gray simply doubled down and insisted that he would proceed to a hearing."
