IF FACEBOOK POST WAS CLEARLY DEFAMATORY
To decide on the claimants’ interim injunction application, Judge Chiah noted he had to determine whether Mr Cheng’s statements were clearly defamatory, and whether no possible defence could apply to him.
On whether Mr Cheng’s statements were clearly defamatory, the judge considered the circumstances leading up to the Facebook post.
These included social media posts by Ms Koh and Mr Ng about Mr Cheng “promoting” COVID-19 vaccines, a statement by the People’s Power Party (PPP) on vaccine-related injuries, and a statement by the health ministry rebutting PPP’s statement.
The PPP statement was issued by opposition politician Goh Meng Seng, who was named alongside Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer in Mr Cheng’s alleged defamatory Facebook post.
This context was set out in Mr Cheng’s Facebook post, which included references to PPP’s statement and the health ministry’s statement.
The judge noted Mr Cheng’s argument that the meaning of his Facebook post was that Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer were “literally” putting the lives of people who believe their anti-vaccination claims at risk of death from COVID-19.
The judge found that the Facebook post could indeed contain this meaning put forth by Mr Cheng, that Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer “should be stopped from advising the public not to take vaccines”.
“It follows from the foregoing that in my view, it cannot be said that the alleged defamatory statements are clearly defamatory,” said Judge Chiah.
The application for interlocutory injunction sought by the claimants failed on that basis. The judge went on to consider whether Mr Cheng had any possible defences.
Mr Cheng argued that his Facebook post was to repel the public attack against him by Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer in their social media posts, which hurt his reputation and integrity.
The judge agreed with Mr Cheng that he could have the defence of right-of-reply privilege, as well as the defence of fair comment on matters of public interest.
Judge Chiah further found that there was no evidence that Mr Cheng intended to repeat the allegedly defamatory statements or threatened to do so, which is a condition for granting the claimants’ injunction application.
The claimants’ application therefore “fails on all fronts” and is “wholly misconceived”, the judge said in dismissing it.
WHO WAS IN THE “BUNCH OF CLOWNS”
Mr Cheng made a separate application to strike out Ms Koh’s husband Mr Ng, as well as Mr Tey and Mr Chan from the defamation suit.
The three claimants argued that they had legal standing to sue Mr Cheng for defamation as they claimed they were included when he used the terms “these people” and “bunch of clowns” in his Jun 21 Facebook post.
With these words, Mr Cheng drew “a clear association with individuals who had been part of the public discourse around COVID-19 vaccines”, which included the three of them, they argued.
But Judge Chiah agreed with Mr Cheng that the three men are neither explicitly nor implicitly referred to in the Facebook post.
The size of the group referred to in the statements mattered, said the judge, and the claimants did not clearly define the membership of the “bunch of clowns”.
For example, if “bunch of clowns” referred to the subscribers of Healing the Divide’s Telegram channel, then membership of this group would exceed 4,000.
If “bunch of clowns” referred to people who opposed and refused vaccinations, then by Ms Koh’s own reckoning, the membership would number 60,000, the judge said.
Judge Chiah therefore found that the “bunch of clowns” group was “large and indeterminate”, and that the three claimants had not shown that this group could be understood to refer to them.
The phrase “bunch of clowns” was a generalisation and a reasonable reader would not understand it to refer to Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan, the judge added.
He therefore struck out their claims of defamation against Mr Cheng.
Judge Chiah also ordered the claimants to pay Mr Cheng costs of S$8,000 and S$2,500 for their unsuccessful injunction application and his successful striking-out application respectively.
