Judgment reserved for defamation suit against Soh Rui Yong

The counsel said he could be identified due to references that the marathon champion had made about one of the lawyers having been suspended from practice.

Lun was handed an 18-month suspension on Oct 10, 2022, after he was found to have acted as a supervising solicitor of practice trainees without the necessary qualifications.

During cross-examination, the lawyer said Soh had timed his Facebook post, near the time the lawyer’s suspension from practice was lifted, to create “maximum impact” to threaten his livelihood.

Lun also challenged the suggestion of incompetence. He said that when he represented Soh in the defamation suit against Liew, Soh had signed off on the line of questioning.

“It does not fall on you to then say your counsel was incompetent when your affidavit said you agreed with the line of questioning by your counsel,” Lun said.

Soh replied that he had only signed off on the affidavit as he trusted Lun, who was his legal counsel at the time.

Another point of contention was the strategy Lun had employed for Soh in the defamation suit against Liew.

Court documents show Lun had advised Soh to apply for the recusal of the district judge overseeing the case. The application eventually failed.

Soh contends that he had repeatedly asked Lun for examples of successful cases of judicial recusal in Singapore that they could rely on, but said the lawyer had not been truthful with him.

The athlete eventually replaced Lun with Eugene Thuraisingam and Chooi Jing Yen of Eugene Thuraisingam LLP as his lead counsel.

Soh subsequently lost the case and was ordered to pay his former teammate $180,000 in damages. Soh also separately lost the case against Malik.

Lun is seeking $180,000 in damages from the runner. He is also asking for a public apology and court injunction to prevent Soh from making similar future statements.

On Aug 27, the runner’s lawyer Akesh Abhilash of Silvester Legal told The Straits Times that he was satisfied with how Soh’s case has been fairly put before the court.

“We will now turn to preparing our written submissions, and await the honourable court’s judgment. As the matter remains before the court, we do not intend to comment further at this stage,” said Akesh.