Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan and wife win appeal court ruling over defamation claim
Case stems from 2011 allegation of cheating at school their daughter attended
In a judgment handed down on Wednesday, the Court of Appeal refused to give the green light to Chinese International School alumni Jonathan and Caitlin Lu, as well as their father Carl Lu, to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal against Chan and his wife, Frieda Hui Po-ming. The Lus were also ordered to pay Chan and Hui HK$150,000 for the legal costs of the appeal application.
In rejecting their application, the three justices – Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon, Madam Justice Susan Kwan Shuk-hing and Mr Justice Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor – wrote that the Lus’ counsel framed the appeal based on a misinterpretation of their judgment, which overturned the finding by the lower court jury that Chan and Hui’s claims were malicious.
Despite the setback on Wednesday, the Lus can still go directly to the Court of Final Appeal to ask to proceed.
The six emails in question were sent between December 1 and 16, 2001; in them, Hui claimed she had heard a cheating rumour from her daughter Joyce, who attended the same school as the Lu twins.
The emails were jointly signed by Chan and Hui, and sent to the school and about 10 parents with a view to discussing the matter.
The trial jury had found all six emails defamatory and four of them malicious.
In the present appeal application, senior counsel Gerard McCoy, for the Lus, sought to challenge before top justices whether the appeal court in overturning the lower court had “usurped the role of the jury as a constitutional tribunal of fact” to determine whether Hui knew the rumour was false before spreading it.
McCoy also wished to clarify whether the appeal court had found the jury verdict “perverse”.
But Lam said the trial judge had failed to give adequate direction to the jury regarding the legal concept of malice.
“It cannot be disputed that the [Court of Appeal] is entitled to set aside the verdict when it was reached by the jury under inadequate direction and misdirection of law,” he said.
He also clarified the appeal court’s earlier judgment should not be interpreted as finding the jury verdict perverse.