SHAH ALAM: A 45-year-old man decided to file a libel suit against his spouse after the latter accused him of domestic abuse.
He claimed the 40-year-old wife, to whom he had been married for 20 years, had made false and damaging statements about him, resulting harm to his reputation among friends and family members.
The father of three even draws the court's attention to the recently concluded acrimonious defamation proceedings between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and submits that in many facets, that proceedings have parallels to this present suit.
However, this time, the woman has won after the High Court here dismissed the suit on Tuesday.
The impugned statements pertaining to a household exchange that occurred at the couple's residence on March 9, last year.
The impugned statements are:
- The husband took a metal broom and threatened to hit our son if she did not go out with him.
- The husband got angry and went amok, hit me with a metal rod and broke my leg and I had to go to the hospital.
- The husband has been abusing and hurting the wife and the three kids.
The plaintiff is currently under investigation resulting from police reports made by the defendant.
The plaintiff contended that the defendant 'gossips and utters the offending statements amongst her friends, the plaintiff's friends, neighbours, and their family members' have been spreading like wildfire.
The plaintiff also asserted that the impugned statements are defamatory in nature, were made in reference to the plaintiff and have been communicated to the third parties.
Judicial Commissioner Dr. Choong Yeow Choyin, in his judgment, said that based on the balance of probabilities, the plaintiff has failed to discharge the burden of proving that the defendant had uttered the impugned statements to any third party.
"The court found that the plaintiff was evasive in his answer when testifying in court.
"He had on numerous occasions refused to answer questions posed to him, responding with the usual 'get it from my lawyer' or 'refer it to my lawyer'.
"The plaintiff's mother who testified as the second witness very ably summed up this entire dreadful episode as nothing more than usual squabbles between spouses and that one should not read too much into these tiffs," he added.
The court also ordered the cost of the proceedings in this court to be borne by the plaintiff, on an indemnity basis.