On Sept 10, the Federal Court in Putrajaya denied Rewcastle-Brown’s appeal leave bid to avoid paying the Sultanah RM300,000 in defamation damages.
“While the significance of the book cannot be underplayed, it does not and cannot provide immunity to the author where there is defamation of a third party.
“In that context, all parties are equal before the law and subject to equal treatment by the courts,” Nallini said on behalf of fellow bench member judges Zabariah Mohd Yusof and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera.
Nallini said the sultanah is entitled to equal treatment under the law.
“The fact that she is a member of a royal family does not preclude her from bringing a claim and being treated as would any member of the public.
“The fact of her background should not be held against her, as all are equal in the eyes of the law,” she added.
It was, of course, never an argument made by the defence in this case that by virtue of being super wealthy and powerfully connected the Sultanah did not have an ‘equal right’ to sue for defamation compared to “any member of the public”.
Yet, this appears to have been the focus of the comments made by the federal court on this matter, as reported generally in the media.
The truth is that ONLY the super wealthy can even contemplate suing others for defamation, given the enormous expense of doing so. An average member of the public could never afford it.
Libel law is a luxury of the wealthy the world over, who increasingly use it as a weapon to silence unwanted criticism from those who cannot afford to defend themselves and so give in, whether or not such criticism is warranted.
In this particular case the defence was that there had been no libel, never that the Sultanah was somehow not at liberty to sue.
A mistake had been corrected, however there was no aspersion cast against the Sultanah nor her sister in law with whom she had been confused. That was the position of the defence.
Given that suits for defamation are in fact the privilege of the super-rich who can use them to financially punish and silence others, whether they win or not, it seems strange for the supreme court judges to appear to turn this matter on its head in this case by implying that somehow there had been an argument to deprive the Sultanah of this prerogative only of the rich.
By doing so the judges have only drawn attention to the real inequities of the situation.