The hearing of a defamation suit brought by Lynas Corporation Limited and Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd against the anti-Lynas group called ‘Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas’ (SMSL) remains at the High Court in Kuantan.

This follows a decision by a three-member Court of Appeal panel in Putrajaya today to dismiss the companies’ appeal over a High Court decision to allow the case to be transferred from the Kuala Lumpur High Court to the Kuantan High Court.

Justice Mohd Hishamudin Mohd Yunus, who chaired the panel, said the court unanimously agreed with the High Court that the court of convenience was the High Court in Kuantan, considering that the addresses of the defendants in the civil suit and the site of the factory were in Kuantan.

He ordered Lynas Corporation and Lynas Malaysia to pay RM20,000 in legal costs to SMSL.

Justices Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim and Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof were the other two judges on the panel.

On Sept 26 last year, Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge John Louis O’Hara allowed SMSL’s application to transfer the civil suit to the High Court in Kuantan for the hearing.

Lynas Corporation of Sydney, Australia, and Lynas Malaysia filed the legal action on April 19 last year at the Kuala Lumpur High Court against SMSL and its two directors, Tan Bun Teet and Lim Sow Teow, and three volunteers, Hang Chong Leung, Lee Chow Fong and Ismail Abu Bakar, over an alleged defamatory article published on its blogsite on March 22 last year.

Lynas had sought an injunction order to have SMSL and five others remove the article titled ‘Civil Society Organisations’ Joint Statement on Lynas Issue: SMSL Malaysian NGO Statement against Lynas’ from its blogsite, until the disposal of the suit.

On July 26 last year, O’Hara dismissed Lynas’ injunction application and held that, at that stage, the court could not conclude whether the statement was defamatory or otherwise until it heard the evidence in a full trial.

Earlier in the proceedings today, the panel heard the submission from lawyer Cecil Abraham, representing the two companies, as well as that of lawyer Bastian Vendargon, for SMSL.

Abraham submitted that the High Court in Kuala Lumpur was the appropriate forum to hear the case as the issues in the case would be subjected to evidence of expert witnesses from Kuala Lumpur and overseas.  

Vendargon, however, argued that the appropriate court to hear the case was the High Court in Kuantan because the defendants resided there and many of the witnesses were likely to be from there.

- Bernama