GROUNDS OF JUDGMENT

This is an action for libel by the Plaintiff against the defendants. The basis of the Plaintiffs suit arises from an Article appearing on the front page of the issue of the Berita Harian dated 10th April 2007 in a report headlined, "the construction of Kuala Lumpur Kedah LKIM complex to ACA set out in paragraphs 3 & 4 of the statement of claim (Bundle A) referred to in my judgment as the impugned Article. The defamatory elements and innuendoes of the impugned Article have been set out in Paragraph 6 of the Statement of claim. The 1st to the 3rd defendants have raised the following defences namely:-

(i) The Plaintiff had failed to establish the impugned Article was defamatory in its entirety.

(ii) Even it could be construed as defamatory, the impugned article made no reference to the Plaintiff.

(iii) The defendants could on the facts of this case rely on the defence of qualified privileged and responsible reportage as there was an absence of malice on the part of the 1st to the 3rd defendants. The 4th defendant was not represented at the trial neither was a defence filed, and after the conclusion of the trial, I dismissed the Plaintiff claim against the 1st to the 3rd defendants with costs and I append below my grounds for so doing.

In determining whether the Plaintiff had proved the impugned Article was defamatory, I kept in mind the propositions from the text Evans on Defamation in Singapore and Malaysia 3rd Edition at pages 10 to 11 and I quote:-

"in applying these various tests, the courts must look to a particular control group-that is, in whose eyes must the estimation of the plaintiff be lowered before the words are said to be defamatory. It has been said that the court will look at the words from the point of view of the law-abiding citizen, that of the average thinking man, the ordinary, reasonable person, or that of right thinking members of society in general. In determining the issue, the courts do not look to the actual effect of the allegations on the persons reputation, or that meaning of the words actually understood or taken by listeners. It is not enough that listeners actually take the words in a defamatory sense, for they must be reasonably justified in so understanding the words before they are found to be defamatory. The test or the defamatory nature of a statement is therefore its tendency to excite against the plaintiff the adverse opinion of those within the control group selected by the court. If the words have such a tendency, they will be held to be defamatory, even though no one may actually believe the statement to be true. It therefore follows that untruth alone will not make a statement defamatory."

The impugned Article reports allegations of wrong doing and is not a conclusive finding of fault against the Management of Lembaga Kemajuan Ikan Malaysia (LKIM) save and except at the end where the comments of the Plaintiff is sought in his capacity as Director General of LKIM and the Plaintiffs answer in the impugned Article is as set out below ie, "Kalau ada, sudah tentu BPR panggil saya", katanya yang kini bercuti sebelum bersara pada 23 April ini."

Having read the impugned Article over and over again, the court is unable to finds anything defamatory in relation to the Plaintiff in respect of the matters raised in the impugned Article. The court refers to the submission of counsel for the Plaintiff on this point and I quote:-

"10. In his testimony PW-2 told the Court that the highest executive appointment in LKIM was the Director-General and the Berita Marian report itself was sufficient to indicate that it was referring to the plaintiff when they contacted Dato Annas to obtain verification. Moreover, he added:-

10.1. those who knew Dato Annas would automatically conclude that the person referred to in the report was none other than Dato Annas bin Khatib Jaafar, the Director Geneal of LKIM;

10.2. the entire officers corps in the Administrative and Diplomatic Service