Citing abuse of court process, judge strikes out defamation suit by trio against ex-NMP over Covid-19 post

 A judge has struck out a defamation suit filed by three individuals against former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng over comments he made on Facebook in June that criticised people spreading misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

While not mentioned by name in the comments, Mr Raymond Ng, Mr Bevan Tey and Mr Chan Swee Cheong contended that by using the words “these people” and “bunch of clowns”, Mr Cheng had drawn a clear association with them, given their participation in the public discourse about the vaccines.

Mr Ng is married to Iris Koh, who founded the anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide. Her trial on 14 charges for offences such as criminal conspiracy and harassment, will start on Dec 16.

In the post on June 21, Mr Cheng, a businessman, had said: “These people who are spreading misinformation are literally killing people if they believe them. Goh Meng Seng, Iris Koh, Brad Bower and their bunch of clowns are not funny. They should be jailed and caned.”

Koh, former Progress Singapore Party member Bowyer, Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan filed the defamation suit against Mr Cheng following his post.

Mr Cheng’s lawyers, Senior Counsel Tan Tee Jim, Mr Chee Kai Hao and Mr Poon Chong Ming, applied to strike out the suit filed by the last three, saying that Mr Cheng’s comments did not refer to them.

In a judgment on Dec 3 allowing this, District Judge Chiah Kok Khun said Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan were not identifiable from the “bunch of clowns” reference.

“The application to strike out the three claimants’ claims is allowed as I find that their claims disclose no reasonable cause of action, and they constitute an abuse of process of the court; and it is also in the interests of justice to strike them out,” he said. He ordered Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan to pay Mr Cheng $2,500 plus GST in costs.

The trio had sought damages as determined by the court, while Koh and Mr Bowyer are seeking damages of $100,000 each for harm caused to their reputations and emotional well-being. 

The five of them also sought a public apology and retraction to be posted by Mr Cheng on his Facebook page and other platforms where the defamatory statements were made.

They contended that the natural and ordinary meaning of Mr Cheng’s statements was that the five of them possessed a malicious intent to cause death akin to the criminal act of killing, thus suggesting a deliberate and premeditated act of harm.

They also contended that the statements implied the five of them were involved in actions intending to cause death or severe harm to individuals, which portrayed them as “malevolent and dangerous individuals”.

They also claimed that the statements had severely damaged their reputations by portraying them as individuals with criminal intent, which had led to “public condemnation, social ostracisation and potential professional repercussions”.

In applying to strike out the suit by Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan, Mr Cheng said they were not named, identified, mentioned or referred to in his statements.

Judge Chiah agreed, saying there was nothing in its language that could be regarded as capable of referring specifically to the three men.

Noting that a key requirement of defamation action is that the claimant must show that a third party would reasonably understand the defamatory words to refer to him, the judge said the three men had assigned varying nebulous attributes in their suit to the “bunch of clowns” group and the membership of the group was ill-defined.

Judge Chiah said that by any of their definitions of the group, the size of the group was likely to be significant.

For example, the judge said that if the “bunch of clowns” group was equated with the group of subscribers of the Healing the Divide Telegram channel, screenshots of the channel show that it has 4,310 subscribers, which he said by any reckoning is not a small group.

He said if it comprised the individuals who had been part of the public discourse around Covid-19 vaccines, the number of such individuals would be imaginably large.

“The factor of size and indeterminacy of the “bunch of clowns” group therefore militates against the three claimants’ contention that they were referred to in the alleged defamatory statements,” said the judge.

He also dismissed a motion filed by the five parties to make Mr Cheng remove his statements and restrain him from making further such statements.

He said the application failed as he found that the alleged defamatory statements are not clearly defamatory, and ordered the five of them to pay Mr Cheng $8,000 plus GST in costs.

In denying the interlocutory injunction, Judge Chiah highlighted the context of Mr Cheng’s full Facebook post.

This included his reference to a response by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on June 3 to comments made by the People’s Power Party (PPP) that the ministry should temporarily suspend Covid-19 vaccines amid rising concerns over vaccine-related injuries.

MOH had rebutted the sources in the PPP statement, noting that there was a very large body of scientific evidence that overwhelmingly showed the protection from Covid-19 vaccines outweighed the side effects.

Mr Cheng had also mentioned statements attributed to infectious disease expert Professor Paul Tambyah, who had stated there did not appear to be a correlation between high vaccination rates and high excess mortality.

Judge Chiah said in this light, Mr Cheng’s comments could be objectively understood to mean that Koh and Mr Bowyer should be stopped from advising the public not to take vaccines, in view of the dangers highlighted by MOH and Prof Tambyah.

Source: Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Permission required for reproduction.

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