Lee Siew Mei v Chew Chin Swee

Case Significance

Illustrates that in consolidated defamation litigation each suit is judged on its own elements and defences, so that a claimant may fail to prove reference, defamatory meaning or malice even while prevailing in a related action.

This High Court decision forms part of a group of consolidated defamation suits arising from a dispute within a residential community society, and concerns one of the counter-actions brought by a member of the society against a single defendant. In this suit, the plaintiff alleged that a statement made by the defendant referred to her and was defamatory, and that it had been published maliciously; the defendant relied on the defences of justification and fair comment. The court's task was to decide whether the impugned statement referred to the plaintiff and bore a defamatory meaning, whether the defendant could rely on those defences, and whether malice had been shown. Hearing this suit together with the principal action and the other related suit, the court weighed the same body of evidence across a lengthy trial. It concluded that the plaintiff had not made out her claim in this suit. Accordingly, the plaintiff's claim was dismissed. On costs, applying the factors in Order 59 rule 16 of the Rules of Court 2012 and taking into account that the consolidated proceedings ran to seventeen days of trial with several witnesses and comprehensive written submissions, the court ordered costs of RM20,000.00 in respect of this suit, subject to allocatur, while granting substantial relief to the plaintiffs in the principal action. The judgment illustrates how, in consolidated defamation litigation, each suit is assessed on its own elements and defences, so that a party succeeding as a defendant in the main action may nonetheless fail in its own claim as plaintiff. The court emphasised that the burden of proving reference and defamatory meaning rested on the plaintiff, and that an allegation of malice must be supported by evidence rather than inferred from the mere fact of publication. Because the plaintiff had not discharged that burden against this defendant, no question of damages arose, and the defences of justification and fair comment did not need to be finally resolved in her favour.