Judicial commissioner Mohd Arief Emran Arifin also ordered Raja Petra to pay 5% in interest on the sum (RM600,000), calculated from the day the writ was filed on Sept 6, 2019 and until the amount was settled.

“The defendant (Raja Petra) is to pay a global sum to Lim for general, exemplary and aggravated damages,” lawyer Simon Murali said.

Arief also awarded Lim RM10,000 in costs.

The decision was delivered via a remote proceeding this afternoon due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On April 14, Arief reserved judgment after hearing a submission from Murali on the quantum of damages to be awarded to Lim, who is also DAP secretary-general.

Lim had obtained a default judgment against Raja Petra last year after the blogger failed to enter his appearance in court.

His legal team also applied to the court for substitute service in which notices of the suit were published in three newspapers. Raja Petra failed to respond to these by Feb 10, 2020, leading to Lim filing for a judgment in default.

Lim, at the last hearing, asked that Raja Petra pay him at least RM10 million for each of the 10 articles published.

This prompted Arief to say: “That is a lot, Mr Lim. How much has your reputation been damaged?”

Lim filed the suit for damages, a front page apology and an injunction to prevent Raja Petra from repeating his allegations, contained in a series of articles under the heading “From the MACC Files” published on Feb 24 and March 15 the same year.

In his statement of claim, Lim sought exemplary damages on grounds that Raja Petra “must have obtained profit from the huge volume of readership on all the articles” and such profits might exceed the amount of damages that could be awarded to him.

Lim’s lawyers had attempted to serve the writ and statement of claim to Raja Petra by personal service at his last known address in Sungai Buloh, but the attempts were futile.