PUTRAJAYA: Former Penang chief minister Lim Guan Eng has lost his appeal at the Court of Appeal in a defamation suit he initiated against MCA vice-president Datuk Tan Teik Cheng and Star Media Group Bhd.
A three-judge panel chaired by Justice See Mee Chun dismissed Lim's appeal on grounds that it has no merit.
Other judges on the bench were Justices Azmi Ariffin and Ahmad Kamal Shahid.
Justice Ahmad Kamal, who read the decision, said that the issue raised in the article was a matter of public interest.
He said a reasonable man would assume that an explanation would be forthcoming from Lim on the issue of funding for SJK (C) Kuek Ho Yao and the change in the vernacular school’s name.
“To our mind, ordinary reasonable readers who read the impugned statement as a whole would understand that it was to seek clarification from the appellant (Lim) to explain the allegation.
“There was an uncertainty to the public as to whether the name of the SJK (C) could be changed. This needed an explanation,” he said.
The court ordered Lim to pay RM30,000 and RM40,000 in costs to Tan and Star Media Group, respectively.
On June 21, last year, the George Town High Court ruled that a comment by Tan, which was published in The Star Online, was not defamatory against Lim.
Lim had filed a defamation suit against the two defendants over Tan's comment on a RM4mil allocation for a Chinese vernacular school during the Johor state election last year.
The comment was published in The Star's Letters to the Editor column.
The High Court found that the impugned statement was not defamatory for several reasons, among which is that the statement when read as a whole was merely a call for Lim to explain the allegations which had arisen in the course of the Johor state elections.
On the part of The Star as the second defendant, the High Court found that the news portal and daily was entitled to rely on the defence of reportage and that it had published the statement in a "fair, disinterested and neutral manner".
