Paul Chan To Face Retrial Over Defamation Case

The Court of Final Appeal has ordered a retrial of a defamation case brought against Financial Secretary Paul Chan and his wife by two students and their father.

The case centres on several emails sent by the Chans in 2011, alleging that the students, who were at the same school as their daughter, had cheated in an exam.

The Chans said they had heard the rumour from their daughter Joyce, who was in the same class as the siblings.

The couple were ordered to pay HK$230,000 in damages three years ago after a High Court jury found all of the material sent was defamatory and some was also published with malice.

But the then Development Secretary and his wife won a reprieve in 2016 when the Court of Appeal found the trial judge had seriously misdirected the jury on the question of malice and ruled that all of the defamatory material was protected by qualified privilege.

The two schoolchildren and their father then lodged their own appeal – questioning whether the court should have ordered a retrial when it found that the trial judge had misdirected the jury. The Court of Final Appeal has now agreed that a retrial should take place.

In its ruling, it said the appeal court had examined the evidence in detail before reaching the conclusion that there could be not be a finding of malice. But "there was evidence which could be regarded as going the other way".

The top court went on to say that there were matters on which both parties could rely on to support their respective positions and therefore no assumption can be made as to the correctness of the lower court's conclusion on the facts.