President of the St Lucia Football Association [SLFA] Inc. Lyndon Cooper is pursuing legal action against SportsMax TV, George Davis, host of the programme ‘The Zone’ and Sabina Charles-Kirton who was Davis’ guest on an episode of his show, for disparaging remarks made during an airing of a sports telecast programming.
According to Cooper, the aforementioned levelled accusations of financial mismanagement, corruption, and other issues at the SLFA.
The SLFA boss said the lawsuit against the trio are for slander and efforts to tarnish the reputation of SLFA Inc. and its management team. He added that the regional sports channel is in no position to cast aspersions on the island’s premier governing football body.
“I feel that SportsMax is in no position to criticize the management style of the SLFA’s leadership, simply because nothing that the SLFA does is going to be offensive to them or undermines their primary function,” Cooper told VOICE Sports, in a recent interview.
He implied that the SportsMax team “misunderstood what the SLFA is about and …the only best place where they can judge (evaluate) their declaration with them (SportsMax) and their guests is at an independent court, which I feel is the most appropriate (place) to deal with those kinds of accusations.”
Davis, who recently had Charles-Kirton on his show, was alleged to have made certain statements about the SLFA that Cooper deemed slanderous. He also said the statements were designed to tarnish the reputation of SLFA Inc. and its management team.
Cooper refuted the statements made on the show and declared that “after today, I will offer no further comments on these accusations, as I have physically retained council on those matters …and I have given lawyers instructions to seek damages because there is nothing else that could be done.”
“They have already created the damage and I cannot now go back and defend the damage …the most I can do is to seek compensation,” he added.
Said Cooper, “What I think that they have done, they have allowed individuals to make pronouncements and to make judgments and to pass guilt on a person’s character without substantiating the facts.”
He added, “For me, from an SLFA perspective …what they have done is to charge the SLFA leadership and find them guilty. And … what they have done now is to sentence them.”
He said there were certain persons “with personal hate” issues against the SLFA’s leadership and while SportsMax provided the medium for them to vent their disagreements, “those persons have gone outside the parameters of the playing field.”
Cooper added, “The only option that I have is to see whether a judge will agree with them.”