The court affirmed that the elements of defamation require a defamatory statement that identifies the plaintiff and is published to third parties, with no valid defenses established by the defendant.

Faizah Jamaludin J:

A. Introduction

[1] This is an action by the 1st and 2nd Plaintiffs against the Defendant for the tort of defamation in respect of three separate posts on Facebook made by the Defendant under the profile name " Alan Ling".

[2] The posts were made on Facebook on 23 October 2018 ("FB Post 1"), 14 March 2019 ("FB Post No 2") and 7 July 2019 ("FB Post No 3"). The posts were in the Mandarin language. The Bahasa Malaysia translation of the said posts are reproduced in section B of this Judgment.

[3] The holy trinity of any defamation action are defamatory statement, identification of plaintiff and publication to third parties: the three elements that a plaintiff has to prove in order to establish his cause of action in the tort of defamation are (i) the statement refers to the plaintiff or reflects his reputation, (ii) the statement is defamatory of the plaintiff, and (iii) the statement was published to a third person by the defendant.

[4] In this instant action, the crux of the Defendant's case was that the Facebook posts published by him did not refer to the Plaintiffs; hence, the impugned statements in the said posts were not defamatory of the Plaintiffs. However, during the course of the trial, the Defendant admitted that Impugned Statement 1(b) (as defined in this Judgment) referred to the 1st Plaintiff.

[5] At the conclusion of trial, this Court made a finding of fact based on the test promulgated by the House of Lords in the English case of Knupffer v. London Express Newspaper Limited [1944] AC 116 (referred to in this Judgment as "the Knupffer test) that all the impugned statements in the three Facebook posts referred to the 2nd Plaintiff. This Court also made a finding of fact based on the reasonable man test that the impugned statements were defamatory of the 2nd Plaintiff.

[6] For the reasons discussed in this Judgment, this Court found that the Defendant had failed to establish a valid defence to the defamatory statements.

[7] Accordingly, this Court found that the Defendant had defamed the 2nd Plaintiff and had awarded the 2nd Plaintiff general damages in the sum of RM150,000,00 together with interests. A permanent injunction was ordered restraining the Defendant from further publications and broadcast of the defamatory statements or anything similar against the 2nd Plaintiff. The Defendant was also ordered to take down the Facebook posts and to publish a written apology to the 2nd Plaintiff in the local newspapers.

[8] The full reasons for this Court's decision and orders are set out in this Judgment.

B. Background Facts

[9] The 1st Plaintiff is a private limited company incorporated under the Companies Act 2016. The 1st Plaintiff is the administrator of a program known as "Life Engineering". The Plaintiffs' plead that Life Engineering is a medical cost crowd sharing platform and not a crowdfunding platform. They contend that the platform enables sharers to participate in the program through an application on mobile telephones or websites.

[10] At all material time, the 2nd Plaintiff was a director of the 1 st Plaintiff.

[11] The 1st Plaintiff launched the Life Engineering program to the public in March 2017.

[12] On 23 March 2017, Bank Negara Malaysia had issued on its Consumer Alerts List, an advisory notice on the 1 st Plaintiff and Life Engineering. After explanation from the Plaintiffs on the nature of the Life Engineering program and that it is not an insurance business, Bank Negara Malaysia removed the 1st Plaintiff and Life Engineering from its Consumer Alert List in January 2018.

[13] On 23 October 2018, the Defendant posted the FB Post No 1 on his Facebook page. The post was in the Mandarin language. The Bahasa Malaysia translation of the post reads as follows:

- FB Post No 1

"Kawan-kawan internet yang dihormati... Untuk mengumpul dana di Malaysia, perlunya mendapatkan kelulusan sekurang- kurangnya tiga jabatan kerajaan barulah boleh mengumpul dana.

...jabatan pertama.. commissioner securities

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