PUTRAJAYA: Former Sessions Court judge Mabel Sheela Muttiah has filed an appeal over the High Court's decision in dismissing her RM100 million defamation suit against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown.
Mabel, who was a former special officer to an ex-attorney-general filed her notice of appeal at the Court of Appeal yesterday to challenge the decision made by judicial commissioner Datuk Raja Ahmad Mohzanuddin Shah Raja Mohzan earlier this month.
Counsel Guok Ngek Seong who appeared for Rewcastle-Brown confirmed this when contacted.
Mabel was once a special officer to Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali.
She filed the defamation suit against Rewcastle-Brown over three articles, including a 2015 Sarawak Report titled, "How AG's office connived to prevent a second postmortem on Kevin Morais - Exclusive Exposè."
However, Raja Ahmad Mohzanuddin dismissed the suit on grounds of technicality after Mabel failed to translate two of the three allegedly defamatory articles into Bahasa Melayu, a mandatory requirement for all pleadings filed in court.
He said the requirement for complete pleadings in Bahasa Melayu was tritely attributed to the language's supremacy as a national language.
He said this was enshrined in Article 152 of the Constitution and Section 8 of the National Language Act 1963/67 and Order 92 Rule 1 of the Rules of Court 2012.
He said the plaintiff made inferences about the meaning of the articles, but there was still no certified translation in BM.
Raja Ahmad Mohzanuddin said he would have awarded RM1 million in damages as one of the three articles was defamatory and injured Mabel's reputation.
He said after carefully reviewing the parties' submissions, he concluded that the first article was clearly defamatory to the plaintiff.
"The article clearly suggested that the plaintiff was involved in a conspiracy of some kind at the highest level to cheat the family of the late Morais of their rights to a second independent post-mortem report.
"On the basis of the evidence presented to me, the article was published worldwide, which clearly damaged and gravely injured the plaintiff," he said.
Mabel was ordered to pay RM15,000 in costs to Rewcastle-Brown.