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SINGAPORE \u2013 Lawyer Clarence Lun\u2019s defamation suit against athlete Soh Rui Yong concluded after 5\u00bd days, with District Judge Sia Aik Kor calling for submissions by Nov 26.<\/p>\n
Lun spent the final day of the hearing on Aug 27 cross-examining Soh, his former client, over a Facebook post that the\u00a0two-time SEA Games marathon champion had posted on his fan page in August 2024.<\/p>\n
The pair sparred over some three hours of cross-examination, with each frequently accusing the other of interrupting.<\/p>\n
Lun argued that Soh had made reckless, sweeping allegations against him, and did not provide reference to any specific case where the lawyer was dishonest or incompetent in his handling of cases.<\/p>\n
At the crux of the issue is a statement Soh made in the post, in which the runner shared his experiences and frustrations of having \u201cto deal\u201d with various lawyers over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soh, who is a lawyer by training, claimed in the post that Singapore has \u201cno shortage of dishonest, incompetent lawyers\u201d, and that he had dealt with three such lawyers over the years.<\/p>\n
Lun, who previously represented the athlete in two separate defamation cases against\u00a0fellow marathoner Ashley Liew<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0former Singapore Athletics executive director Malik Aljunied,<\/span><\/a> contended that he can be identified from the post.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n During cross-examination, the lawyer said Soh had timed his Facebook post, near the time the lawyer\u2019s suspension from practice was lifted, to create \u201cmaximum impact\u201d to threaten his livelihood.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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,\u201d Lun said.<\/p>\n Soh replied that he had only signed off on the affidavit as he trusted Lun, who was his legal counsel at the time.<\/p>\n Another point of contention was the strategy Lun had employed for Soh in the defamation suit against Liew.<\/p>\n Court documents show Lun had advised Soh to apply for the recusal of the district judge overseeing the case. The application eventually failed.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The athlete eventually replaced Lun with Eugene Thuraisingam and Chooi Jing Yen of Eugene Thuraisingam LLP as his lead counsel.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n On Aug 27, the runner\u2019s lawyer Akesh Abhilash of Silvester Legal told The Straits Times that he was satisfied with how Soh\u2019s case has been fairly put before the court.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will now turn to preparing our written submissions, and await the honourable court\u2019s judgment. As the matter remains before the court, we do not intend to comment further at this stage,\u201d said Akesh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Lawyer Clarence Lun\u2019s defamation suit against athlete Soh Rui Yong concluded after 5\u00bd days, with District Judge Sia Aik Kor calling for submissions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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