PUTRAJAYA – The Court of Appeal today has affirmed the Johor Bahru High Court’s decision to award RM100,000 in damages to Suharnizan Md Sidek, who was a victim of body shaming in 2020.
Suharnizan, who was body shamed by social media influencer Eira Aziera, had filed the suit against the latter on October 13, 2020, at the Johor Bahru High Court.
On May 13 last year, high court judge Datuk Seri Shamsulbahri Ibrahim found that Suharnizan had successfully proven her claims and awarded her RM100,000 in damages and RM30,000 in legal costs.
At today’s appellate court hearing, which was held via Zoom and led by justices Datuk Seri Kamaludin Md Said, Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim and Datuk S.M. Komathy Suppiah, the three judges unanimously affirmed the lower court decision, and ordered RM10,000 in costs to be paid to Suharnizan.
Justice Zaidi, in delivering the decision by the three-judge panel, today said that the appeal filed by Eira holds no merits, with no proof that the lower court judge had erred or was plainly wrong in his decision.
“We have gone through and considered the high court decision in this case, and we found that the lower court has not erred in deciding that the sentence uttered by the defendant (Eira) is libellous.
“The words uttered were clear and therefore there is no need for a speech expert to be called to testify during the trial.
“Based on the documents submitted with the appeal, we agreed with the high court’s decision that the elements of the claim have been proven.”
They also dismissed a cross-appeal application filed by Suharnizan’s counsel Mohd Rasheed Hassan on the amount of damages awarded by the high court, where they claimed that the amount was manifestly inadequate.
“We found that the quantum awarded by the high court judge is a reasonable amount in this case, and it was not manifestly excessive or inadequate in the matter.
“We are of the opinion that in awarding the amount, the high court judge has taken into account what was pleaded by the plaintiff (Suharnizan), which is (the factors of) body shaming and cyberbullying.
“Therefore, we found that the cross-appeal filed by the plaintiff regarding the quantum holds no merit and it is dismissed with RM10,000 costs. The amount of quantum awarded is affirmed,” he said.
Earlier, the panel sat through lengthy submissions from Rasheed, as well as lawyer Yahaya Ahmad, who appeared for Eira, where he said the elements of Suharnizan’s claim were not fulfilled and there were no expert witnesses called to testify during the trial that took place from October 24 to 28, 2021. – October 12, 2023