Appeals Court strikes out Khairy's notice of appeal

PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal today struck out the notice of appeal filed by Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin in a defamation lawsuit in which he was ordered to pay RM150,000 in general damages to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
A three-man bench comprising justices Datuk Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Puan Sri Zaleha Yusof and Datuk Zabariah Mohd Yusof unanimously allowed Anwar's application to strike out the notice of appeal.
Tengku Maimun, who chaired the bench, said there was some ambiguity in the notice of appeal.
"Having perused the notice of appeal, we find there is some ambiguity as to whether the appellant (Khairy) is appealing against the High Court's dismissal of his (Khairy's) application to amend his statement of defence," she said.
She said the notice of appeal stated that Khairy was not satisfied with the whole decision of the High Court but did not make any mention that he was also appealing against the High Court's dismissal of his (Khairy's) application to amend his statement of defence.
Tengku Maimun said there was no doubt there were two separate orders made by the High Court, namely relating to the High Court award of damages and also on the dismissal of Khairy's application to amend the statement of defence.
She said this matter did not follow the principle annunciated by the Federal Court in the case involving A. Santamil Selvi vs J. Deepak which the Federal Court held that it was mandatory for a separate notice of appeal to be filed if there was separate decision for orders made by the court.
She ordered Khairy to pay RM10,000 in costs and also rejected the application by his counsel, Tan Sri Dr Muhammad Shafee Abdullah to stay the Court of Appeal decision pending the filing of leave to appeal to the Federal Court.
Following this decision, the Sept 29, 2017 decision of the Kuala Lumpur High Court which ordered Khairy to pay RM150,000 in general damages to Anwar for allegedly uttering defamatory words against him during a ceramah in Lembah Pantai, Kuala Lumpur in 2008, stays.
The High Court, however, had dismissed Khairy's application to amend his statement of defence to include that his remark was a fair comment.
The former opposition leader sued Khairy on March 7, 2008, claiming that Khairy, who was then Umno Youth vice-chief, had uttered defamatory words against him and caused the publication of a video clip titled "Anwar and kin no threat" on news portals, including Malaysiakini.com.
Anwar claimed that the video clip contained part of the defamatory speech given by Khairy during a ceramah in Lembah Pantai on or around Feb 20, 2008.
During the proceedings, Anwar's lawyer, R. Sivarasa argued that Khairy's notice of appeal was defective as there were separate applications, thus separate notices of appeal must be filed.
Muhammad Shafee submitted that there was no need to file separate notices of appeal in this case because it involved the same appellant and respondent.
After the court's verdict, Sivarasa told reporters that following the court's decision to strike out the notice of appeal, there was no appeal before the court.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Shafee said he was shocked with the court's decision and would be filing the leave to appeal and stay order by tomorrow. — Bernama