GEORGETOWN – The legal war between Attorney General Anil Nandlall and U.S.-based social media personality Melissa Atwell-Holder (known as “Melly Mel”) is heading for a high-stakes confrontation in America. Nandlall yesterday confirmed he is initiating legal proceedings in the United States to enforce a $37 million default judgment awarded to him by the Guyana High Court, vowing to challenge Atwell-Holder’s long-standing boast that she is “untouchable.”
Nandlall, speaking on his weekly show, Issues In The News, emphasized that this move is about establishing a fundamental legal principle: “This must be a learning experience for all of us who believe that we can be in a foreign country and do what we like, say what we like and libel people as we wish and we are somehow immunised and insulated from the laws of this land.”
The Legal Gauntlet: Guyana vs. the First Amendment
The Attorney General stressed that the Guyana judgment is “equally enforceable as any judgement obtained in the United States of America.” Nandlall noted the legal commitment: “The arms of the law are very long… I don’t necessarily want anything from it. The lawyers from America will take their pay. Even if we have to get $1 per day, they will get it because the law must never be allowed to appear incapable and impotent to address an illegality.”
However, Atwell-Holder, in a fiery, separate social media response, immediately seized upon the legal complexities of the US system, stating: “I welcome my day in a ‘U.S Court’ with Mohabir Anil Nandlall SC MP because he has got to be the most brainless, dense, asinine, moronic, numbskull attorney general in the history of attorney generals.”
Atwell-Holder asserted that the enforcement will hit a major roadblock: the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and the demanding U.S. “actual malice” standard, established in the landmark case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
Under this precedent, for a public figure like the Attorney General to win a defamation claim, he must prove the defendant acted “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.” Atwell-Holder claimed that if Nandlall cannot meet this high bar, which is specifically designed to shield critics of public officials, the U.S. court is likely to reject enforcement.
The Battle of Principle and Assets
Nandlall stressed the pursuit is a matter of principle against Atwell-Holder’s alleged disrespect for the judicial system. He directly addressed her boast that she has no assets: “She will come out and say she doesn’t have a cent in her name and doesn’t own any property in her name. And that may be so but this judgment will ensure it remains like that because any cent that goes into her bank account or anywhere that she has money or property, this judgment will be enforced against that money or that property.”
Atwell-Holder countered by claiming she never received legal documents for the original default judgment, a claim Nandlall strongly refutes, and dared the AG to provide proof of a conversation they allegedly had via Facebook Messenger, where he supposedly sought to feed her “credible information” via a third party because he “didn’t want anything leading back to you.”
The $37 million judgment is just one of Atwell-Holder’s recent legal woes; she also lost a $35 million judgment to the Balwant Singh Hospital (which she has appealed) and a multi-million-dollar defamation suit she brought against a rival personality in a Brooklyn federal court. Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation, Deodat Indar, also has a separate $50 million lawsuit pending against her, ensuring her legal fight remains center stage.
