Courts should 'make lump sum orders'

THE court of appeal said in its judgment that courts should award damages as a single lump sum and not divide them into general compensation and aggravated damages.

It noted that it was well-established that aggravated damages in defamation make up merely a component of the compensatory damages.

It said that, therefore, Justice S. Rajendran should have awarded prime minister Goh Chok Tong a single sum in his defamation suit against Workers Party secretary-general J. B. Jeyaretnam.

Justice Rajendran had awarded Mr Goh $10,000 as general compensatory damages and another $10,000 as aggravated damages.

In its judgment, the appeal court referred to a ruling in English case law in which a judge had said he distrusted the "arbitrary sub-division" of different elements of general damages.

The judge, Lord Hailsham, had also said that in cases where the award of damages contained a subjective element, it was not desirable or even possible to simply add separate sums together.

The appeal court noted that compensatory damages should be based on the collective actions of the defendant starting from the time he made the defamatory remark until the end of the trial.

Published in the Straits Times. July 18, 1998