Rocky's case: Both sides bound by 'No-Subjudice' undertaking
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs and the defendant in the defamation suit taken by NSTP et.al. against blogger Rocky have agreed to the following joint undertaking:
That the parties agree to henceforth not publish any article, comment or post regarding the dispute presently before the High Court in this action that may be regarded as subjudice or that may prejudice the fair trial of the action.
The undertaking was arrived at in chambers before Justice Hishamuddin Yunus at the High Court of Malaya Kuala Lumpur this morning.
The joint undertaking aside and pending further hearing of the case, Rocky has not been required to take down the 48 articles cited by the plaintiffs in their Statement of Claims against the blogger, who was formerly a senior editor at NSTP until his VSS last year.
As for the over 400 readers' commentaries that were taken offline, defence counsel Edmond Bon said "it is in no way an admission that any of the content was subjudice". Quote:
“There was no way to remove only selected comments, so we had no alternative but to put it all off-line … We do this to err on the side of caution, to let the judicial process take its due course.”
The Star has an update based on an AP story. And here is Rocky in his own words.
Comments
This is contradiction to what THE STAR writes:
Blogger Ahiruddin Atan has agreed to immediately remove 48 articles cited in the New Straits Times libel suit against him to avoid prejudicing the trial.
JEFF OOI says: The Star used the story from AP, which was factually wrong. Rocky was not compelled to take down the 48 articles, not as yet. I notice The Star has been alerted of the inaccuracies in the AP story and had indeed amended its SMS alerts just now. I got this first hand as I was sitting next to Rocky's lawyer Edmond Bon whenj the AP journalist called him on the phone.
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January 29, 2007 12:11 PM