Summary: Wong from SMK Convent Light Street, Penang filed a case against Lee, the principal of the school for defamation remarks that was being reported to the Penang Education Department. The statement written by Lee are Wong aggressively attacking the principal, scolded the principal “you are gila”, “you are an idiot” and “you go to hell”. In addition to make the defamatory true, he adds her refusal to abide the school regulations and complaint about her performance. She has been accused too of calling her pupils with inappropriate words and being disrespectful among other teachers.
Action: Wong had indeed won the case by proving all those defamatory statements wrong and not aligned with her character and actions. Judge Azman ordered Lee to pay a total of RM430,000 damages and ruled Lee to immediately stop carrying out such remarks and claim RM 1.8mil in damage. Both teachers was transferred to different school to continue their profession respectively.
Review: The case has taken over all the points under the Law of Malaysia, Defamation Act 1957. The law also applies Section 211 and 233 of the Communication and Multimedia Act 1998 for which the defamation remarks was circulated via electronic platforms to higher authority and wide range of audience. In addition to that, the principal can be charged under Section 509 under Section 211 for insulting the modesty of the plaintiff Wong by words. The allegations thrown upon by the defendant to the plaintiff are proven wrong. Because of the report, Wong would have felt a feeling of hatred, ridiculed and humiliated by society members, friends and staff of SMK Convent Street. The statement made also had clearly stated her name only and not a certain group or class of people which makes the claimant identifiable. Wong and the court preceding viewed the same page as the publication of the report containing defamatory remarks to the Department had severely tarnished her professional status, character and reputation. I believe that the defendant should have undergone a counselling session with strict probation period to monitor his course of action over the time. This can be made a lesson to all concluding that regardless of who a person is in the society, the law tolerates no misconduct of action regardless of the degree of impact. The case here is touching based on conventional law which also applies strongly in cyberlaw context because as mentioned in artcicles in this blog, any wrong act done in real also applies the same in cyberspace with no distinct penalty to offenders. The above case can be further supported with “Teacher Gets $363K For Student’s Lie, Defamation” that took place in Californi (https://blogs.findlaw.com/injured/2013/11/teacher-gets-363k-for-students-lies-defamation.html)
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