PUTRAJAYA – The Federal Court has deferred its decision on the National Feedlot Corporation Sdn Bhd (NFCorp) and executive chairman Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail's appeal in a defamation suit they filed against Nurul Izzah Anwar and PKR.
The appeal was heard for about two hours via Zoom today before a three-member bench, comprising Datuk Seri Mohd Zawawi Salleh, Datuk Hasnah Mohammed Hashim and Datuk Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal, which deferred the ruling to a date yet to be fixed.
This was confirmed by Nurul Izzah's counsel, Razlan Hadri Zulkifli.
Lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah represented NFCorp and Salleh.
NFCorp and Salleh obtained leave to proceed with their appeal to the Federal Court on March 8, 2018, with two legal questions for the court's determination.
The suit was filed on December 24, 2013, by NFCorp and Salleh against Nurul Izzah, who was then Lembah Pantai MP, and PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail in relation to a statement over allegations concerning the purchase of eight property units at KL Eco City.
They claimed that Nurul Izzah, who is now Permatang Pauh MP, had made a slanderous statement on Malaysiakini TV on March 7, 2012.
On March 4, 2016, the Kuala Lumpur High Court dismissed their suit after ruling that the statement, when read as a whole, was not defamatory to NFCorp and Salleh.
NFCorp and Salleh also lost their appeal at the appellate court on July 10, 2017.
In today's proceedings, Shafee urged the court to allow the appeal, saying the three-man Court of Appeal panel had misconstrued its analysis and decided that only some of defamatory statement were relevant to the appellants.
Razlan Hadri countered saying it was a well-settled principle of law that, in deciding whether a defendant has defamed a plaintiff, the court must look into the entire statement as a whole and not just focus on parts of the statement the plaintiff contends to be defamatory.
He said the appellants' appeal should be dismissed as both the high court and Court of Appeal had arrived at the finding that the impugned statement, read within the context of the entire article, did not defame the appellants. – Bernama, December 3, 2020
