PUTRAJAYA (May 3): The Court of Appeal today reduced damages which Sistem Televisyen Malaysia Bhd (TV3) and the then Media Prima Bhd and Current Affairs Radio and Television group managing director Datuk Shaharudin Abdul Latif have to pay to opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim for defamation.

From an amount of RM1.1 million for aggravated and exemplary damages ordered by the High Court, the three-member bench allowed TV3 and Shaharudin's appeal to reduce the quantum to a global sum of RM600,000.

The award is over the television station's defamatory report which accused the PKR president and Port Dickson member of Parliament of being one of the masterminds of the Lahad Datu incursion in Sabah in 2013.

Justice Datuk Has Zanah Mehat, who led the bench, allowed the appeal to reduce the damages after hearing submissions from counsel J Leela, who appeared for Anwar, and counsel Liew Teck Huat for TV3.

"We are allowing the appeal in part where we will vary the award given in May 2018, which separated the exemplary and aggravated damages. We award the global sum of RM600,000 for general and aggravated damages," she said.

The other judges were Justices Datuk P Ravinthran and Datuk Mohd Soffian Abdul Razak.

The bench also ordered parties to bear their own costs of the appeal which was allowed in part.

Liew claimed that the High Court’s judgement on the defamation suit is not meant to overly punish the defendant (TV3). 

The television station’s counsel stood firm that TV3 was only being a responsible news distributor that relayed information from reports they received from international media and did not mean any ill intent to the opposition leader.

He argued that the order for damages being separate should not have been made by the High Court, as the judge did not follow present judicial trends in granting damages and appealed for a global sum of RM300,000 in general, aggravated and exemplary damages. 

Ravinthran asked Liew that if High Court Judge Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim’s judgement deemed that TV3’s actions were malicious, and questioned if it was fair for the TV3 counsel to state in his submission that there was no malice in the television station’s actions.

He replied that the High Court judge’s judgement that TV3’s actions were malicious was based on the television station not verifying the information before publishing its report and this alone should not constitute higher damages.

Meanwhile, Anwar’s counsel replied that TV3’s actions were malicious, citing Justice Ahmad Zaidi’s ground of judgements.

She pointed out that TV3 was given several opportunities to settle this case out of court and withdraw its report, which was published right before the 2013 general elections, but they refused to do so.

“There should be a penal element to irresponsible journalism, therefore the damages are not unwarranted as there were clear indicators of malice

"Unlike Utusan Malaysia, which apologised and retracted their article, TV3 did not apologise,” J Leela said.

TV3 was previously ordered by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on May 14, 2018, to pay a total of RM1.1 million in damages to Anwar after the television station had falsely reported that he was linked to the Lahad Datu intrusion in Sabah eight years ago.

Justice Ahmad Zaidi granted the amount after finding the television station had failed to practise responsible journalism when it did not verify the authenticity of the news before airing it in its Buletin Utama on March 2, 2013.

The High Court found that there was malice on TV3’s part for broadcasting news which was purely based on Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd’s report.

Justice Ahmad Zaidi added that despite Utusan admitting that its report was false and had no basis, TV3 was still firm in not settling the suit.

The High Court judge ordered the television station to pay RM600,000 in general damages, RM250,000 in aggravated and exemplary damages each, and RM40,000 as costs to the opposition leader.

Anwar had filed the suit against Utusan Melayu, Utusan's former group editor-in-chief Abdul Aziz Ishak, TV3, Shaharudin, and Buletin Utama news editor Ing Boon Seng on March 8, 2013.

The Port Dickson MP sued them over the front-page article “Ketua Pembangkang dikaitkan dengan pencerobohan?” (Opposition leader linked to intrusion), published in Utusan Malaysia on March 2, 2013.

Anwar had reached an agreement with Utusan and its former group editor-in-chief Datuk Abdul Aziz Ishak to settle the case on Oct 5, 2016, after the company’s counsel read out a statement of regret on behalf of the company in open court as part of the terms of settlement.

Under the terms, Utusan and Abdul Aziz agreed to pay Anwar RM50,000 in damages and publish the statement of regret.