Tan Swie Hian v Yeng Pway Ngon

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Loo Ngan Chor
• Judgment Date: 04 July 2012
• Neutral Citation: [2012] SGDC 243
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: District Court Suit No. 2592 of 2005
• Published date: 23 January 2013
• Year: 2012
• Hearing Date: 10 March 2011,26 January 2012,09 March 2011,12 June 2012,07 March 2011,14 September 2010,22 November 2010,25 January 2012,10 October 2011,08 March 2011
• Plaintiff Counsel: Muthu Kumaran (M/s Kumaran Law)
• Defendant Counsel: Margaret George (M/s Belinda Ang Tang & Partners)
• Citation: [2012] SGDC 243

District Judge Loo Ngan Chor: Introduction

Let me give you very brief reasons for the decision that I shall be making in regard to the trial before me, that had concluded on 10th March 2011. In coming to my decision, I have carefully read parties’ closing submissions of 10th October 2011 and their reply submissions of 25th January 2012. I have checked their submissions, about 600 pages of them, against the record of the case.

The plaintiff has sued the defendant for libel arising from a letter dated 25th May 2005 that the defendant admittedly wrote to Mr Liu Thai Ker, then chairman of the National Arts Council (“NAC”), and copied to Mr Aun Koh, the deputy director of Visual Arts and Literary Arts of the NAC.

On the afternoon of 13th May 2005, both the plaintiff and the defendant attended a meeting of the NAC. They had attended the meeting to be briefed as members of a panel of judges for an event known as the Golden Points Award 2005. Present was Mr Chua Chim Kang, also an invited judge. According to the defendant, the plaintiff and Mr Chua were to be judges in the Chinese Poetry segment of the event and the defendant a judge in the Chinese Novel segment.

The plaintiff and the defendant are both Cultural Medallion winners, which I understand to be the top accolade given to illustrious persons in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the Chinese Arts scene in Singapore. According to the defendant, he won the Cultural Medallion in 2003 for Chinese literature and the plaintiff for the category of art.

The subject of the allegedly offending letter was a conversation that the parties had. It was common ground that the conversation was brief and conducted softly, in undertones. It was also common ground that Mr Chua was seated between the parties.

According to the allegedly offending letter of the defendant, amongst other things, when the defendant greeted the plaintiff as Dr Tan, the plaintiff reproached the defendant for being present at the briefing which involved a government-supported event when he had been jailed for being a leftist. The plaintiff allegedly also said “don’t know how many people you have sold out!” The letter stated that Mr Chua had heard “everything” as Mr Chua allegedly said to the defendant “later: What a hot-tempered man he is!”

The letter referred to the plaintiff as “not only a very famous artist in Singapore but also a cultivated Buddhist. Why should he humiliate and slander me to my face for no reason? I cannot recall having offended him in any way and am shocked and upset by his verbal violence.”

The letter went on to say that it wished to have advice on whether he should “receive insults like this quietly” in future NAC events. It also said that he felt that the chairman of the NAC should know about “this incident: a cultural medallion winner humiliating another!” and asked to be given the advice sought.

The plaintiff’s version, set out for the first time in his affidavit of evidence in chief, shared a common thread with the defendant’s version, namely, references to the defendant’s presence at the event when he despised the government and had been jailed. In terms of slant, the plaintiff’s version was one of surprise at the defendant’s presence and did not have the abrasiveness apparent in the defendant’s version. The plaintiff’s version did not contain the accusation that the defendant had betrayed anyone.

On receiving no response to his lawyer’s letters, the plaintiff sued on 17th August 2005. The progress of the suit was thereafter by fits and starts, which the plaintiff explained in testimony as having been occasioned by his having heard that the defendant was unwell.

The plaintiff has sought to assign 33 defamatory meanings to the letter. I am satisfied that the objective, natural and ordinary meaning to be assigned to the letter is that the plaintiff is a hot-tempered and rude person, that he humiliates others without provocation and/or no or little reason, and that he demonstrates these character traits even in a social or public setting. These meanings are close to but not quite those pleaded at 28.14-28.18; 28.25; 28.20-28.21; 28.26-28.29 of the Statement of Claim (Amendment No. 3).

In my view, whilst it may be debatable whether it is defamatory to say of someone simply that he is hot-tempered or rude or humiliating, it is likely that most objective persons will agree that to say of someone that he does the same even in a social or public setting would be defamatory. While bad temper, rudeness or humiliating others in a social setting may not bring on one ridicule or contempt, it would nonetheless tend to cause others to shun one. And that suffices to make such a libel defamatory. (See [2.6], Gatley on Libel and Slander, 11th edition.) Moreover, even if the recipients treated the letter as a narration of a private dispute, and thought no more of it so far as the plaintiff’s character was concerned, the defamatory letter did not cease to be defamatory because the law is concerned about the tendency to defame as opposed to the actual effect of a defamation. [2.1, page 39, Gatley.]

In regard to the innuendo meanings ascribed by the plaintiff, that he is being defamed as a “Buddhist hypocrite” or as an artist who falsely claims that his works are inspired by Buddhist philosophy (paragraphs 29, 30 of the Statement of Claim (Amendment No. 3)), I am not prepared to agree that these innuendos are present. The reason for this is that I do not think even true aspirants of a religious faith can reasonably be expected to be perfect persons and that they will be condemned as charlatans on account of any character stains. In other words, one has to be clear that to be a Buddhist is not to proclaim one to be the Buddha, the distinction, if one likes, of one engaged on a journey as opposed to one who has arrived.

In that connection, the plaintiff has not pointed to the 22nd November 1972 article, entitled “Philosophy and Life” - written by the defendant, admittedly using the plaintiff as the unnamed model [193, 194, PCS], where it seems the defendant criticised how the mismatch between high-falutin moral ideas and the subject’s actions filled him with “disgust” - as being a known background fact to supply the innuendo of the plaintiff being a hypocritical Buddhist. Neither is that the plaintiff’s pleaded case.

I now consider the defendant’s plea of justification anchored to the meanings that I have found. Since defamatory, there is a presumption of falsity, and it is for the defendant to justify, that is to prove his allegations to be true. It bears emphasising that the court has to judge based on principles of evidence and procedure. In this connection, the court may draw proper inferences from the available evidence but may not...