JOURNALIST R. Nadeswaran has learnt a bitter lesson that tweeting can be painful and costly.
He had sent out tweets in 2010 that were deemed defamatory and last month, a Kuala Lumpur High Court ordered him to pay RM500,000 (S$200,000) in damages to businessman Datuk Mohamad Salim Fateh Din in what is probably the first of such a case in the country.
Nadeswaran had sent the first tweet on July 12, 2010 to one tonypuah presumably DAP's Petaling Jaya Utara MP and the second on Dec 22 of the same year, calling Mohamad Salim a "land thief" and sent to TerencetheSun, his colleague in The Sun.
At the time, Nadeswaran had a Twitter following of about 4,000 and the tweets were presumably read by his friends in the micro-blogging site. And, since it was an open account, these were shared with others on the Net.
Justice Amelia Tee Hong Geok Abdullah, who on April 27 ordered Nadeswaran to pay the damages, ruled that he did not file any defence to Mohamad Salim's claim and as such, was deemed to have admitted to the businessman's claims.
Nadeswaran's counsel was not allowed to rebut the claims, except over the amount of damages.
On May 8, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's ruling not to grant Nadeswaran an extension to file his defence, ordering him to pay RM15,000 in legal costs.
The significance here is that the journalist had sent out the tweets in his personal capacity and on his personal Twitter account.
He was not tweeting as a journalist for The Sun.
Therefore, he was sued in his personal capacity and his employer was left out of the entire action.
As an employee, he could have had the advantage of employer liability legal counsel and damages, if any, borne by the employer.
Since he was sued as an individual, he has to bear the damages himself indeed a heavy burden for a journalist.
If a defence had been filed, there would have been a trial and he could call witnesses, argue and rebut; eventually a competent judgment would have been delivered.
He could appeal, if judgment is not in his favour, or be vindicated if it is.
Legal justice is the only justice available in a civilised society.
Therefore, it is incumbent that litigants have to file their papers, collect all the evidence, keep all notes (in this case, digital as well) and engage a good lawyer.
But Nadeswaran or his lawyer has given the plaintiff a walkover. If he had filed, he could have used courtroom tactics to embarrass or force the plaintiff to call off the action.
But all these are academic because of his failure to reply to an action, which brings us to the repeated warnings of many the latest being Britain's Attorney-General Dominic Grieve that tweeting can be libellous. It is equal to getting a defamatory article published in the newspapers, if thoughtlessly done.
Grieve told BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat: "If somebody goes down to the pub with printed sheets of paper and hands it out, that's no different than if somebody goes and does a tweet. The idea that you have immunity because you're an anonymous tweeter is a big mistake."
The time-honoured adage, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to slander, applies.
