PM Lee awarded costs

Blogger Leong Sze Hian has to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong S$21,000 in costs -- even before going to trial.

This hefty bill was issued to Leong's lawyer, Lim Tean, via PM Lee's lawyers led by senior counsel Davinder Singh.

Awarding of costs made public

A copy of the letter requesting payment was shared to Facebook by Leong on March 18:

PM Lee's lawyers' letter to Lim read: "Please let us have a cheque for $21,000 by no later than 5pm on 21 March 2019."

Where did these costs come from

This S$21,000 sum stems from two summonses -- S$6,000 for the one allowed and S$15,000 for the one dismissed -- by the judge.

A High Court judge, Justice Aedit Abdullah, ruled via a written judgement on March 12 to throw out Leong's counterclaim against PM Lee.

The judge then proceeded to award costs to PM Lee and said via a written judgment that Leong’s counterclaim “discloses no recognised cause of action, let alone a reasonable one”.

This was after Leong’s lawyer filed a counterclaim alleging that PM Lee’s original libel suit was an abuse of court.

Details of what both parties lawyers did prior to this judgment can be found at the end of the article.

What happened just before this awarding of costs

Details of the written judgement can be found here:

Libel trial to proceed

As a result of throwing out the counterclaim by Leong, the judge ruled that the libel suit against Leong will proceed to trial.

Leong predicted costly legal battle

Leong had previously argued in his application to strike out PM Lee's claim on the grounds that the damages in this case, if any, were likely to be less than the legal costs to both sides involved in bringing the case to trial.

Leong had given his estimation of the legal costs as “in the region of S$150,000 to S$200,000 on each side”.

Leong’s claim in his affidavit was that PM Lee’s suit was not “real and substantial”, which was why it constituted an abuse of the process of the court.

What has happened so far

• In November 2018, PM Lee sued Leong for defamation. This was after the blogger shared a link to his Facebook page -- without comment -- an article published by a Malaysian website alleging that PM Lee had helped former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak launder money in relation to scandal-hit Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

• In late December 2018, Leong filed a countersuit against PM Lee for the abuse of the process of the court when it was announced the blogger would be represented by Lim.

• On Jan. 9, 2019, PM Lee’s lawyers then made an application to strike out the counterclaim “on the ground that it has no basis in law and is completely hopeless”.

• On Jan. 21, 2019, Leong then announced an application will be filed to strike out PM Lee’s original claim for abuse of process of the court and the hearing for both their applications were heard on Monday, Feb. 25.