Defamation requires proving the defamatory nature of published words, which the court found to be satisfied when false claims injuring professional reputation were made without substantiation.

RK Nathan J:

Facts

The plaintiff and the 1st defendant are both leading lawyers in this country. The 2nd defendant is the publisher and owner of "The Star" newspaper. The 3rd defendant is the publisher and owner of the "New Straits Times". There is no doubt that both these newspapers are the leading English dailies in this country with a large circulation. The acrimonious, long standing feud between the plaintiff and the 1st defendant goes back to their days as law students at the Singapore University. Soon after both had set up their respective legal practices, both entered parliament. The plaintiff was elected as a government member of parliament, whereas the 1st defendant was elected to parliament as a member of the opposition. Even here they continued their running battle.

The plaintiff had sued the 1st defendant on another matter. The then Supreme Court having ruled in the 1st defendant's favour, the plaintiff was ordered to pay the taxed costs of RM9,414.38 which included the allocatur fees. On or about 5.2.96 the plaintiff's solicitors, Messrs Murthi & Partners, faxed to the plaintiff the allocatur together with a letter from the 1st defendant indicating that since he had not responded to the 1st defendant's earlier demand notice, execution proceedings were being prepared due to the plaintiff's failure to settle the costs. Being dissatisfied with the conduct of his solicitor, Mr. Murthi, who admitted to having overlooked the matter, the plaintiff decided to take over the conduct of the matter and with this in mind he telephoned the office of Karpal Singh & Co on 9 February 1996 and spoke to Mr. Manoharan, the legal assistant. He asked for time. When he finally received the file from Murthi & Partners he was out of time to apply for further review and decided to settle the sum quietly. He then sent a notice of change of solicitors and a Bank Buruh (Malaysia) Berhad (the bank) cheque for the said sum. On the said letter he had written in his own handwriting as follows:

Attn: Mr. Manoharan

The conversation (Mano/Vijandran) on 9.2.96 refers.

I tried to get in touch with you until 3.30 today.

To be on the safe side, am sending the cheque by registered post straightaway.

You will receive the same by Wednesday.

Regards

Sgd.

On 16 February 1996 the plaintiff received a phone call from the bank informing him that he had issued the cheque from an account that had been closed. The plaintiff had himself been charged for a criminal offence and as a result of this the bar council had refused to issue him a sijil annual to enable him to practise. This went on for about a year since January 1995. The plaintiff was compelled to close his law office and let his staff go. The plaintiff had operated two clients' accounts; one was with Bank Buruh (later converted to BSN Commercial Bank) and the other was with Bank of Commerce. The plaintiff had closed the account with Bank Buruh and had transferred all funds to the account with Bank of Commerce. When his staff was with him the plaintiff did not write the cheques. Therefore when he had to write the cheque for the 1st defendant, he used the cheque book that was lying on top of a bunch of cheque books and with the words "clients' account". Since the words "account closed" were not endorsed on the cheque book he assumed it was alright to issue a cheque from the Bank Buruh account.

He then was informed by one Mr. Indran who was an accountant with Karpal Singh & Co that there was a problem with the cheque. On the same day he made out a replacement cheque from the Bank of Commerce clients' account for the same amount, addressed the letter to the attention of Mr. Indran and indicated in the said letter that the earlier "cheque was issued from the wrong account due to a clerical error". The plaintiff requested Mr. Indran to send his office boy to collect the said che