Cardiologist awarded RM100k over colleague's defamatory letter

SHAH ALAM: The High Court has awarded RM100,000 in damages to consultant cardiologist Dr Lim Bee Chian after ruling that a letter penned by a fellow cardiologist to hospital management was defamatory and published without legal justification.
Judge Faizah Jamaludin found that Sunway Medical Centre's (SMC) former Cardiology Department head, Dr Hendrick Chia Miah Yang, had defamed Dr Lim in a letter dated Nov 14, 2017.
The letter, which questioned Dr Lim's personal conduct in several patient cases and accused him of performing inappropriate medical procedures, was sent to the hospital's chief executive officer and copied to seven other senior personnel.
In her ruling, Faizah said the letter would be understood by any reasonable reader to suggest that Dr Lim had repeatedly performed medical procedures on patients without first consulting their primary cardiologists.
"The impugned words are capable of and tend to expose the plaintiff in the eyes of the community to hatred, ridicule or contempt, to lower him in their estimation, and/or cause him to be shunned and avoided.
"The words went further to imply that four out of five of Dr Lim's angioplasty cases were inappropriate and contrary to established medical guidelines," she said.
Faizah said the court also disagreed with the defence's contention that the letter was written under qualified privilege.
She said the defendant had no duty to make such statements, and those who received the letter had no valid reason to be informed of its contents.
"Thus, Dr Chia failed to discharge the burden of proving that the statements were made on a privileged occasion."
The court granted an injunction to restrain Dr Chia from repeating the defamatory statements or anything similar in nature.
The court also awarded RM50,000 in costs to the plaintiff.

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