Judge Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal said reputation was a factor, irrespective of whether a plaintiff had brought an action for defamation in his or her private or public capacity.
The ruling set aside the Court of Appeal’s verdict and restored the findings of the High Court which had awarded Lim, a former chief minister of Penang, RM150,000 in damages.
Judge Nallini Pathmanathan, who chaired the three-member bench, concurred with Harmindar, who delivered the judgment.
Judge Abdul Rahman Sebli, in dismissing the appeal, said Lim had brought the suit in his official capacity.
He said Lim’s suit was flawed from the start as he was not represented by a government legal officer as required under the Government Proceedings Act, nor had the private lawyer who appeared for him obtained a licence from the state legal adviser.
In 2012, Lim, then the Penang chief minister, sued Perkasa, its president Ibrahim Ali, then information chief Ruslan Kassim as well as newspaper publishers The New Straits Times Press and Utusan Melayu.
Americk Sidhu, who represented Lim, however, withdrew the appeal against Ruslan just before a hearing in September 2020 after lawyer Adnan Seman told the court that Ruslan had passed away a few days earlier.
In July 2019, the apex court allowed Lim leave to appeal on a sole legal question whether the DAP secretary-general and former finance minister had the legal standing to maintain the lawsuit in his official capacity.
Lim was relying on a September 2018 ruling by the apex court that a government can sue a citizen for defamation, refusing to accept the common law Derbyshire principle that public authorities cannot bring an action against a person for lowering their reputation.
On Dec 21, 2016, the Court of Appeal allowed the appeals by Perkasa and the publishers to overturn the decision by the High Court which had ordered them to pay damages to Lim for defaming him.
The appellate court had ruled that Lim could not sue the media for defamation in his official capacity.
Then Court of Appeal judge Rohana Yusuf (now Court of Appeal president) had said the court was bound by its earlier decision in the case of Utusan Melayu against former Pahang menteri besar Adnan Yaakob that a public official could not sue anyone, including the media, for defamation.
Rohana said the court had accepted the principles decided in Derbyshire.
However, following the September 2018 ruling by the Federal Court in another case that the government can sue for defamation, the publishers abandoned their appeals, agreeing to follow the High Court’s decision and pay Lim RM200,000 each in damages.
The suit was filed in 2012 against seven respondents, as Lim said Ruslan had published a statement on Perkasa’s website on Oct 1, 2011, which implied he was endangering national security by exposing the country’s secrets to Singapore.
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