James Foong J:

The Plaintiffs' Claim

The plaintiffs are advocates and solicitors practising under the name and style of M/s Cheah Teh & Su (CTS) in Kuala Lumpur. They claim that the defendants by two letters (the letters) written by the defendants' solicitors, M/s Wee Choo Keong & Faaiz (M/s Wee Choo Keong) dated 15 August 1995 and 18 August 1995 respectively have defamed them.

Background

Before I proceed to set out the alleged defamatory statements in the letters it is necessary to explain the background leading to the issue of the letters.

The 1st defendant is the matriach of a Chinese family of 8 children - 3 boys and 5 girls. Members of this family, through holding companies and by themselves, owned 13 pieces of land at Jalan Imbi, Kuala Lumpur. For ease of reference, I shall refer to them jointly as "the vendors". For these lands which adjoined each other I shall collectively refer to them as the "said property". Part of the said property were charged to banks, but due to differences among family members the bank loans were not repaid resulting in foreclosure actions by the banks. CTS were engaged, principally by the 1st defendant, to defend these actions and to neg