After The Online Citizen (TOC) editor Terry Xu met Mr Lee Hsien Yang for lunch on Nov 4 this year, he decided not to subpoena him and Dr Lee Wei Ling, as he realised they could not establish the truth of their allegations, argued Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's lawyer yesterday.
In his cross-examination of Mr Xu, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh noted that Mr Xu's lawyers wrote to the court on Nov 4, after the lunch, to say they would not be proceeding with their claims against PM Lee's siblings as third parties in PM Lee's defamation suit against Mr Xu.
"This lunch would have been fixed before Nov 4. So you had ample opportunity to serve the subpoena on Mr Lee Hsien Yang on Nov 4," said Mr Singh.
"It would appear, Mr Xu, that something took place at that lunch for you to decide not to proceed with the third-party proceedings."
Denying this, Mr Xu said he had made his decision earlier. He said that in March, he had obtained copies of certain documents that emerged at a disciplinary tribunal's investigations into a case of misconduct involving Mr Lee Hsien Yang's wife, senior lawyer Lee Suet Fern.
The documents were not disputed by PM Lee or his siblings, Mr Xu noted, adding he viewed them as more reliable than documents that PM Lee's siblings had publicly released earlier, on which Mr Xu had based his initial defence. It was thus "not paramount" to call them as witnesses, he said.
But Mr Singh noted there was nothing in the e-mails that emerged from the tribunal's investigations that proved PM Lee had misled his late father into thinking the 38 Oxley Road house had been gazetted. This was one of the allegedly defamatory claims Mr Xu had made in the TOC article that led to the libel suit.
"So, knowing there were no such e-mails, it was all the more necessary for you to subpoena Mr Lee Hsien Yang to give evidence of what he claimed was said, correct?" Mr Singh asked.
Mr Xu disagreed.
When pressed by Justice Audrey Lim on why he dropped the third-party claims, Mr Xu said he had thought it was too late to proceed by the time the question was raised to him in October, as it was close to the date of the hearing.
Justice Lim then asked if the court had ever told Mr Xu he could not proceed with the third-party claims, to which he replied that it had not. "So you dropped it on your own volition?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied.
"It is not like the court gave you the impression that you could not proceed with the third-party claim?" asked Justice Lim.
"That's not the case," Mr Xu said.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew's lawyer, Ms Kwa Kim Li, may appear in court to give evidence.
Lawyer Lim Tean, who is representing Mr Xu, told reporters after yesterday's hearing that Ms Kwa had been served a subpoena and was "trying to have it set aside".
Ms Kwa, who handled the late Mr Lee's six wills before his final will which she did not prepare, may take the witness stand today or tomorrow if Mr Lim's subpoena is successful.
