A plea for more time
Extract from Dr Chee Soon Juan's remarks when he applied to 'address the court' after he arrived at 2.45pm:
This entire process thus far has been frankly quite hideous. From the moment of summary judgment where we were given no chance to defend ourselves, take our case to court and not to have our counsel present to boot during the hearing...
This afternoon, you have chopped off our legs, lobbed off our arms and you expect us right now to continue with this assessment for damages.
All we want you to do is to give us a little bit more time to prepare our cross-examination...I ask you to apply some common sense, some logic...
Maybe I'm just mistaken, maybe we should not let justice get in the way. This is the crux of the problem here.
Now this is not about a small matter. You are talking about an entire political party being placed in a situation where we stand to be wound up, made bankrupt, not to mention ruin personal lives.
There is something wrong with the picture right now...
We are asking you for some protection...This is a travesty of justice. Please, please take that into consideration. And I ask you one more time to reconsider your decision.
A question of timing
Extract from lawyer M Ravi's cross-examination of PM Lee:
M. Ravi: Mr Lee, you will agree that the article was published in the February 2006 issue (of the New Democrat)?
PM: Yes.
M. Ravi: How is it possible that between February 2006 and April20, 2006 (when the lawyers' letter was sent to the SDP), which is about two months, you had no knowledge of such a defamation?
PM: Your Honour, SDP does not extend to me a complimentary copy of the Democrat.
M. Ravi: Mr Lee, do you have an effective machinery that reads the opposition parties' papers?
PM's counsel Davinder Singh: What's the relevance of that to the assessment of damages?
M. Ravi: Do you read the SDP website, Mr Lee?
PM: No, Your Honour.
M. Ravi: Do you read any opposition papers?
PM: Your Honour, from time to time, opposition publications are drawn to my attention. Had I known about (the defamatory New Democrat articles) earlier, I certainly would have acted earlier.
There was every reason for me to scotch the allegations in the articles and quash the very grave defamation as soon as I knew but, unfortunately, I did not discover that until two months later. Fortunately, it was not too late.
M. Ravi: So you would say that none of your information-gathering apparatus told you about this particular piece of information.
PM: Your Honour, if it is any comfort to Mr Ravi, I have instructed my apparatus to work even harder at reading the SDP newsletters in the future.
WHY SO LONG?: SDP lawyer M. Ravi quizzed PM Lee on the time it took for him to respond to the offending articles.