Court of Appeal dismisses Farhash's ad interim injunction against news portal

The Star

The Court of Appeal on Wednesday (Oct 8) dismissed an application by businessman Datuk Seri Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak and two others to obtain an ad interim injunction against news portal MalaysiaNow and its editor, Abdar Rahman Koya.  Lawyer Rajesh Nagarajan, representing MalaysiaNow, said a three-judge panel applied the principle from a 1987 precedent involving The New Straits Times Press and AirAsia Bhd, where the court would be reluctant to feter the speech or freedom of expression of the media.    Previously, on Sept 4, the Shah Alam High Court dismissed a similar restraining application.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00Today was the hearing at the Court of Appeal for the appeal to the injunction where the

00:19injunction application that was filed by Farhash was dismissed in the Shalam High Court and he

00:26had launched an appeal in the Court of Appeal and he had filed for something called an ad

00:30interim injunction which is a temporary injunction pending the disposal of the main injunction

00:36application so the court a panel of three judges sat in the Court of Appeal today hearing the

00:41application and the court has decided to dismiss the application by Farhash which means that there

00:46is no injunction against my clients MNOW and MNOW is free to publish as they deem fit the news

00:54the court stated that the reason that the injunction application the ad interim injunction

01:03application by Farhash was dismissed is because the court was bound by the decision of the Supreme

01:08Court in the case of NST and AirAsia where the court will be very reluctant to impose an injunction

01:15or to fetter the speech or to affect the freedom of expression of any person especially the

01:22media so because of that the injunction was not given and furthermore it is also a pertinent fact

01:29that the defendants my clients have also raised the defense of justification number one number two

01:34qualified privilege and number three fair comment now the fact that we have raised the defense of

01:39justification means that we are saying that whatever that was posted by Malaysia now is actually the

01:45truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and we will prove this in the Sha'alam High Court

01:51come trial day where we will not only put in the evidence but we will also call the witnesses to come

01:57and testify to show that we are speaking the truth so basically it means we can still report

02:02yes yes yes correct go ahead basically it means we will still report so we are very happy

02:10i have nothing else to add i'm just happy

02:15okay okay all right thank you very much

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