A three-member bench chaired by Justice Lee Swee Seng said the High Court did not make an appealable error in law and fact that warranted appellate intervention.
Lee, who sat with Justices Che Ruzima Ghazali and Azhahari Kamal Ramli, said the evidence revealed that Gobalakrishnan had defamed S Selva Kumar and his wife, Indrani Ramasamy, by way of the three impugned publications.
“If the appellant is disputing the publications, he should have called the telco company to show that his mobile phone number was not used to transmit the (defamatory) communication,” he said.
Lee said this would have rebutted the presumption of publication under Section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950.
The bench also ordered Gobalakrishnan to pay RM15,000 in costs to the couple.
On Feb 23 last year, Judicial Commissioner Raja Ahmad Mohzanuddin Shah Raja Mohzan said Selva Kumar, a captain with Malaysia Airlines, and Indrani had successfully proved that Gobalakrishnan had defamed them on three occasions.
The defamatory statements were contained in two picture messages and one voice message which Gobalakrishnan had published through WhatsApp on June 4, 2019.
The couple brought the suit against Gobalakrishnan on Nov 7, 2019.
In the first picture message, the former MP was found to have defamed the couple by calling them “gold diggers” and accusing them of cheating several businessmen who, he claimed, had lodged police reports against them.
Gobalakrishnan was also found to have wrongfully published a second defamatory picture message accusing Indrani of cheating several businessmen.
In the message, he had claimed that the wife of a “Tan Sri” had lodged a police report against Indrani and had also warned other women to take care of their husbands.
In the voice message, Gobalakrishnan had libelled Indrani by accusing her of going after seven people, which allegedly led to a former minister’s wife lodging a police report against her.
Rueben Mathiavaranam represented the couple, while Nur Izzatul Amirah Zawawi appeared for Gobalakrishnan.