His lawyer, Farah Shuhadah Razali, told reporters Shahrir had also withdrawn his application to amend his defence statement, leading Synergy Promenade to withdraw its application to strike out Shahrir’s defence.

The court then dismissed the three applications with no order to costs and fixed Jan 7 for further case management, she said when met after case management which was held in chambers before judicial commissioner Darryl Goon.

Also present during the proceedings was lawyer Chetan Jethwani, acting for Synergy Promenade.

Shahrir applied to strike out the suit on grounds that Synergy Promenade had not followed procedure and had no basis to seek compensation of RM100 million from him.

Synergy Promenade meanwhile filed the application to strike out Shahrir’s defence statement saying it failed to provide grounds on why he had made the alleged defamatory statements against the company.

The company filed the suit against Shahrir, who was then Felda chairman, on June 4. It accused him of making several defamatory statements between December 2017 and March 2018 which were published by the mass media and reposted on Facebook, YouTube and various news portals.

According to the statement of claims, Synergy Promenade alleged that the statements had tarnished its reputation and caused it to lose several projects it was working on.

The company sought an injunction order to prevent the defendant from republishing the statements as well as compensation of RM100 million, benefits, costs and other suitable relief.