Wife of development chief Paul Chan kept sending emails defaming teenage pupils, court hears
First day of civil trial sees Paul Chan and his wife accused of repeatedly making false claims that their daughter’s schoolmates cheated
The development minister and his wife were in court yesterday to face allegations that they defamed two of their daughter's schoolmates by accusing them of getting away with cheating in an exam because their father was one of the school governors.
Development Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po and his wife Frieda Hui Po-ming are being sued by Carl Lu and his twin children Jonathan and Caitlin, both 20, in the Court of First Instance.
The Lus say that emails sent by the couple between December 1 and 15, 2011, ruined their reputations. Carl Lu is a well-known businessman and member of the Chinese International School board of governors. His children were pupils at the school, and Jonathan Lu was head boy.
The Lus' lawyer, Robert Whitehead SC, described Chan's and Hui's allegations as a "nasty situation". The couple had said in the emails they were acting out of love for the school.
"It is OK to love the school, but it is not a licence to repeatedly libel two schoolchildren and their father," Whitehead said.
The case started with a rumour among pupils and their parents in November 2011, Whitehead said, after four pupils claimed that the twins had behaved suspiciously during an exam because they looked around and had slips of paper.