Hong Kong development minister ‘circulated defamatory statements’ about Chinese International School teenagers, court hears
Development secretary Paul Chan Mo-po and his wife failed to verify the authenticity of claims the teenage twins had cheated on an exam before sending out emails, lawyer argues
Development secretary Paul Chan Mo-po and his wife were circulating defamatory statements by falsely accusing teenage twins of cheating in an examination while failing to verify it, an appeal court heard on Wednesday.
The argument was made as part of a fresh legal bid by the brother and sister to clear their names after the High Court in 2014 found Chan and his wife Frieda Hui Po-ming liable for defaming the teenagers and their father over allegations of cheating at school and ordered the Chans to pay the pupils’ family HK$230,000 in compensation.
Chan and his wife, who have filed a separate appeal, appeared in court on Wednesday. Chan did not comment on the case.
The jury at the original trial found that six emails sent by the Chans about Jonathan and Caitlin Lu, as well as their father, school governor Carl Lu, between December 1 and 16, 2011, were defamatory, while four were also malicious.
On the first day of a three-day appeal hearing, the Lu family asked the court to re-examine the two claims found not to be malicious and the grounds for allowing the Chans to make the defamatory statements.
The two sets of parents did not know each other before the case but their children were all Year 13 students at the Chinese International School in 2011.