Goh wins higher damages on appeal

THE Court of Appeal has raised from $20,000 to $100,000 the damages won by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in his defamation suit against opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam.

It also awarded Mr Goh full costs, ruling that it was unjustified for the trial judge, Justice S. Rajendran, to award him only 60 per cent of his costs.

The verdict was delivered in a written judgment signed by Chief Justice Yong Pung How and Justices M. Karthigesu and L.P. Thean.

They said that the trial judge made three mistakes in assessing the damages for Mr Goh who appealed for $200,000 and for Mr Jeyaretnam to pay his full costs.

The mistakes were: The finding that the Workers' Party chief had no malice when he told an election rally on Jan 1 last year that his election team-mate, Tang Liang Hong, had filed two police reports against Mr Goh and his team.

The three judges said: "The statement was a cleverly disguised sting, directed at Mr Goh, and was intended by Mr Jeyaretnam to cast a stain on Mr Goh's reputation in the hope that it might enhance his (Mr Jeyaretnam's) chances at election the next day." His failure to give enough weight to some aggravating factors in the conduct of Mr Jeyaretnam's lawyer, Queen's Counsel George Carman, during the trial.

The QC, the judges noted, mounted a baseless attack on Mr Goh's integrity, character and standing as Prime Minister. The amount of $20,000 is disconsonant with precedent cases. Opposition MP Chiam See Tong, for example, won $50,000 after his picture was used in a restaurant's advertisement.

The judges noted that Justice Rajendran's decision on costs took into account the disparity between the meaning of the words used by Mr Jeyaretnam and the pleading made by the plaintiff.

While they agreed that there was a disparity, it did not think that a significant amount of time could have been wasted for the court to arrive at this finding.

Mr Jeyaretnam, who is facing seven other defamation suits by PAP leaders for the words he used at the rally, also appealed against Justice Rajendran's verdict.

He argued that the words were not defamatory and that, if they were, the damages awarded earlier to the PM should be reduced to a nominal sum.

The Appeal Court rejected his arguments, presented through his Queen's Counsel Charles Gray, that Mr Goh ought to be pinned precisely to the meaning pleaded in his statement of claim: that Mr Jeyaretnam's words suggested he was guilty of criminal misconduct.

The three judges disagreed. "The extent of injury depends on how injurious the meaning of the offending words is, and this is a question for the courts to decide."

Published in the Straits Times. July 18, 1998