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Grounds publishedDecided 28 Mar 2025
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General Division of the High Court

Damages for defamation were fixed far below what the plaintiff claimed

Foo Diana v Woo Mui Chan

[2025] SGHC 54Case no. Suit No 510 of 2021

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Damages for defamation were fixed far below what the plaintiff claimed

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  1. Introduction

  2. [1] A claim for damages is not, contrary to what an optimistic litigant may think, akin to a lottery. In many cases, there is a degree of uncertainty involved in the process of assessing a plaintiff’s loss and what award of damages would be commensurate to set that right. But that uncertainty does not change the basic premise that a court of law is required to assess damages based on principle, precedent and proof.

  3. [2] In my earlier decision in Foo Diana v Woo Mui Chan [2023] SGHC 221 (“Foo Diana (Liability)”), I held that the defendant, Ms Woo Mui Chan, was liable for defaming the plaintiff, Ms Diana Foo, in respect of two statements published by the defendant. Before me now is the issue of the assessment of damages payable by the defendant to the plaintiff. Reflective of the acrimony that these proceedings have been steeped in, the parties have adopted widely divergent positions on the appropriate quantum of damages to set right the wrong suffered by the plaintiff. The plaintiff claims that her losses are “at least $500,000” but seeks a total award of at least $350,000. The amount the plaintiff hopes for is more than ten times greater than what the defendant submits the plaintiff is entitled to.

  4. [3] Having taken some time to consider carefully the evidence led and the parties’ submissions, I find that the defendant has considerably the better of the argument. In short, based on how the plaintiff’s case has been advanced and the evidence that was before the court in support, the plaintiff’s case, in my view, largely comes down to bare assertions, surmise and hyperbole.

  5. [4] An award of damages, at least as far as this case is concerned, is compensatory. Thus, while I appreciate that the plaintiff takes the utmost umbrage at the defendant’s conduct, and the law of defamation does take cognisance of this to some extent, it can only carry the plaintiff so far. However, it comes nowhere near the very substantial figures that she has suggested. Having given the matter mature consideration, I assess and fix the damages payable by the defendant to the plaintiff in the total sum of $41,250. I explain the reasons for my decision below.

  6. Background facts

  7. [5] I have set out the background facts to this case in Foo Diana (Liability). It suffices to say for present purposes that the plaintiff is an advocate and solicitor who was called to the Singapore Bar in or around February 2005 and has been in practice since. The plaintiff and the defendant became acquainted with one another sometime in 2015 and became friends. However, their relationship subsequently took a downturn due to disputes over moneys allegedly owed by the defendant to the plaintiff. This bad blood culminated in the defendant later publishing two defamatory statements of the plaintiff.

  8. [6] First, in or around 2018, the defendant published a public review on the Google page of the Law Society of Singapore (“LSS”) which alleged that the plaintiff had “bullied” her and forced her into doing “illegal deals” (“Statement 1”):

  9. [7] Second, on 3 March 2020, the defendant lodged a written complaint to the LSS in which she alleged various improprieties against the plaintiff (“Statement 2”):

  10. [8] In Foo Diana (Liability), I held that both Statement 1 and Statement 2 were defamatory of the plaintiff. In arriving at my decision, I rejected the defendant’s plea of justification in respect of Statement 1 as she was unable to prove the truth of the statement. I also rejected the defendant’s invocation of qualified privilege in respect of Statement 2 and found that, while a statement outlining alleged misconduct by an advocate and solicitor to the LSS could in principle attract qualified privilege, the defendant had been actuated by malice.

  11. The parties’ cases

  12. The plaintiff’s arguments

  13. [9] The plaintiff seeks general damages of $300,000 and aggravated damages of at least $50,000.

  14. [10] Broadly, the plaintiff lays great emphasis in her submissions on the importance of her reputation to her profession as a lawyer and argues that “all is at stake when a lawyer’s reputation is tainted”. This is principally because her reputation as a lawyer would affect her ability to attract and obtain clients, who may be repulsed from engaging her services based on the taint to her reputation caused by the defendant. In this regard, the plaintiff relies on the evidence of witnesses who consist of persons who apparently stopped referring work to her after catching wind of the defendant’s allegation that the plaintiff had been involved in “illegal deals”. The plaintiff also argues that defamation against a lawyer is “worse than defaming a politician”, as while a politician is able to clear his or her name in the public domain, a lawyer does not have the benefit of doing so.

  15. [11] Although the plaintiff claims that she is unable to quantify the actual loss that she has suffered, she maintains that her loss is “in the region of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions”. This assertion is largely premised on the inherent ease of transmitting information through the Internet: since Statement 1 was posted on the Internet in the form of a Google Review, it could have been seen by any client or potential client using the Internet to search for legal assistance or conduct due diligence on her with a view to enlisting her services.

  16. [12] To arrive at her quantification of $300,000 in general damages, the plaintiff primarily adopts an approach of reciting the facts and awards made in earlier cases before scaling them to the present day based on inflation. After this exercise is repeated for a number of precedent cases, the plaintiff roundly stakes her claim for a “maximum quantum in general damages” in the sum of $300,000.

  17. [13] In so far as her claim for aggravated damages is concerned, the plaintiff appears to rely on four factors as supporting an award of aggravated damages in this case. First, my rejection of the defendant’s defence of justification in respect of Statement 1 in Foo Diana (Liability). Second, my finding that the defendant had been actuated by malice in respect of Statement 2 in Foo Diana (Liability). Third, the fact that she had been subjected to humiliating and embarrassing questions in cross-examination. Fourth, a lack of an apology from the defendant and the defendant’s refusal to settle the plaintiff’s claim when given the opportunity to do so.

  18. The defendant’s arguments

  19. [15] As a starting point, the defendant emphasises that the plaintiff is not a person of public prominence, and thus derives no support from awards of general damages that have been made to public persons such as political leaders. The defendant argues that, based on recent case law, the upper limit for general damages in cases that do not involve political leaders is $45,000 (as compared to $160,000 in cases that do involve political leaders). From this starting point, the defendant urges a downward adjustment to $30,000 in general damages based on various factors including: (a) the vague nature of the defendant’s defamatory statements; (b) the plaintiff and the defendant not being well-known public figures; and (c) the extent of publication of the defamatory statements not being wide.

  20. [16] The defendant also submits that no further award of aggravated damages is warranted in this case.

  21. [17] The applicable legal principles to damages for defamation are well-established. However, for reasons that will become shortly apparent in the course of my analysis below, I propose a brief return to first principles and consider things from the perspective of the distinction between general damages and special damages.

  22. [18] An award of general damages addresses the damage which the law presumes as the natural and probable consequence of the wrong suffered. For this reason, a claim for general damages does not need to be specifically pleaded and a general pleading that “the plaintiff claims damages” would suffice (Noor Azlin bte Abdul Rahman and another v Changi General Hospital Pte Ltd [2022] 1 SLR 689 (“Noor Azlin”) at [253]).

  23. [20] In determining the quantum of general damages for defamation, the court will usually consider the following factors (Shanmugam Kasiviswanathan v Lee Hsien Yang and another matter [2024] 5 SLR 194 (“Shanmugam”) at [28]):

  24. [21] An award of special damages, on the other hand, addresses damage which the law will not presume to be the ordinary consequence of the defendant’s wrongful act but which arises as a result of the special circumstances of the particular case. Given this, they should be specifically pleaded so as to give the defendant fair notice that such a claim is being made (Noor Azlin at [258]).

  25. [23] In assessing whether aggravated damages should be awarded and the quantum thereof, the court will consider if there are circumstances such as, among other things, a plea of justification that is bound to fail, persistence by way of prolonged or hostile cross-examination of the plaintiff, a failure to make any or any sufficient apology and withdrawal, conduct of the preliminaries or the trial in a manner calculated to attract wide publicity, persecution of the plaintiff by other means, and malice (LHL v XYC at [68]).

  26. My decision

  27. Whether the plaintiff can claim for her loss of earnings, business and clientele

  28. [24] A preliminary but fundamental issue that arises in relation to the plaintiff’s claim is the plaintiff’s reference to her losses of earnings, business and clientele in arriving at her quantification of damages that ought to be payable by the defendant. The question that arises is whether the plaintiff may mount such a claim and, if so, how this claim should be assessed.

  29. Whether a claim for loss of earnings, business and clientele falls within the ambit of general damage or special damage

  30. [25] The plaintiff has explicitly stated in her closing submissions that she does not make any claim for special damages. This is consistent with her Statement of Claim (Amendment No 1) dated 29 June 2022 (“SOC”), where she simply claims “[d]amages to be assessed”. The distinction between general damages and special damages which I have outlined above is therefore not lost on the plaintiff. In her closing submissions, it is stated, quite unequivocally, that “[the plaintiff] is not claiming for special damages”, but the court is urged to consider the fact that she had lost various referrals in assessing the (general) damages that she should be awarded. The plaintiff then goes on to say, in the conclusion of her closing submissions, that “her losses (usually translated as special damages) in terms of her being defamed and posted on the world wide web and open to the general public at large are at least $500,000.00”, but she has opted only to make a claim for general damages in the sum of $300,000. Likewise, in her pleadings, the plaintiff has not made any reference to a specific claim for losses taking the form of her loss of earnings, business and clientele.

  31. [26] The issue of whether a claim for general damages can encompass a plaintiff’s loss of business, earnings and clientele appears to not be fully settled under Singapore law. In Continental Steel Pte Ltd v Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Southeast Asia Pte Ltd and another [2023] 5 SLR 445 (“Continental Steel”), Dedar Singh Gill J observed that there were authorities either way, but that it was not necessary for him to resolve this issue as the claimant in that case had advanced its claim for loss of profits under special damages and the first defendant did not contest that characterisation (at [269]). In the absence of clear authority on this issue, I propose to consider it afresh in this case.

  32. [27] On the one hand, authorities of some vintage have seemingly allowed loss of business to be claimed as general damage. In McGregor on Damages (James Edelman, Jason Varuhas & Andrew Higgins eds) (Sweet & Maxwell, 22nd Ed, 2024) (“McGregor”), the learned editors note that “general loss of business as a result of a defamatory statement actionable per se has been taken to be general damage in a number of cases” and cite the following two examples in support (at para 52-035).

  33. [28] First, in Evans v Harries (1856) 1 H & N 251 (“Evans”), the plaintiff innkeeper was the victim of slander and sought to recover damages reflecting the loss in custom and profits from persons abstaining from being guests and customers of the plaintiff in consequence of the slander. At the trial, the plaintiff’s counsel proposed to ask the plaintiff if there had been any difference in the profits of his business since the uttering of the slander. This question was objected to by the defendant’s counsel, but overruled by the judge, and the plaintiff answered that “his business was less, and that many customers had ceased to come to his house”. The defendant argued that general evidence of the loss of custom was not admissible. The court disagreed and held that the evidence of the loss of business had not been improperly received.

  34. [29] Second, in Harrison v Pearce (1859) 32 LT OS 298 (“Harrison”), the plaintiff, who was a proprietor of certain newspapers, sued the defendant for a libelous publication in the defendant’s newspaper that “charged the plaintiff with endeavouring to grind down his workmen by improperly reducing their wages” and “stated that his papers were almost defunct, and that the greater portion of the advertisements were fictitious” (at 298). At trial, the judge admitted evidence of the injury suffered by the plaintiff in the form of a falling off of the circulation of his paper, and directed the jury that the defendant was liable in general damages for the natural consequence of his publication. The defendant objected to this on the basis that such loss was special damage which had not been alleged. Pollock CB disagreed and made the following observations which I set out in extenso (at 298):

  35. [30] It can be seen from this extract that the crux of Pollock CB’s decision was how his Lordship drew the distinction between general damage and special damage. More specifically, his Lordship contrasted a general loss of custom in the form of the falling off in the circulation of the plaintiff’s paper, which he thought to be general damage, with particular instances of loss (ie, “a particular situation of great benefit to [the plaintiff]”), which he considered to be special damage.

  36. [31] However, more recent authority has questioned the correctness of the distinction drawn in Harrison. In the decision of the House of Lords in Associated Newspapers Ltd and others v Dingle [1964] AC 371 (“Dingle”), Lord Radcliffe commented that Harrison “can be rather a misleading guide to the assessment of general damages for defamation” as “it is best understood in relation to what we should today characterise as an item of special damage (though it was not so regarded then), and that it does not contain a full expression of any general rule for the ascertainment of libel damages where they are at large” (at 397–398). Similarly, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest stated that Harrison “is somewhat too short to be helpful in declaring general principle” and “[t]hough only general damages were claimed the ruling was concerned with what would today seem like an item of special damage” (at 417).

  37. [32] A similar approach was taken in the earlier decision of the English Court of Appeal in Calvet v Tomkies and others [1963] 1 WLR 1397 (“Calvet”). In that case, an actress brought an action in libel and slander against a journalist who had reported in an article that she had said that “Hollywood was ‘vicious, corrupt and cruel’.” No allegation of special damage was made. In an application for discovery, the defendants sought that the plaintiff produce documents showing, inter alia, her earnings from her professional employment before and after the publication of the article. The English Court of Appeal held that these were not relevant as the plaintiff had not alleged special damage. Lord Denning MR explained thus (at 1399):

  38. Russell LJ (as he then was) took the same view. His Lordship said that “if evidence of actual loss of earnings or decline in business, even without any figures mentioned, is to be put forward in a case such as this, as at present advised, I for my part am inclined to think that it should be pleaded with consequential discovery” (at 1400).

  39. [33] In my judgment, the modern view stated in Dingle and Calvet ought to be preferred. Loss of earnings, business and clientele is properly within the ambit of special damage. Thus, a plaintiff who does not throw down the gauntlet by properly pleading and particularising such loss, and more importantly, adducing sufficient evidence in support of such loss, cannot collaterally introduce a claim for such loss within his or her claim for general damages.

  40. [34] This seems to me to be the right conclusion as a matter of principle. The three heads of damages that underpin general damages in defamation – viz, loss of reputation, vindication and hurt feelings – are not pecuniary or financial loss. A claim for loss in a plaintiff’s custom, business, earnings or clientele is paradigmatic pecuniary loss and is therefore of a different kind from what the law of defamation takes to be general damage. This was recognised by Sir Wilfrid Greene MR (as he then was) in Rook v Fairrie [1941] 1 KB 507 (“Rook”) when he said that “in a libel action the damages awarded are, for the most part and often entirely, without any real connection with any pecuniary loss at all”, and “when you are dealing with damages in a libel case you are endeavouring to express in terms of money several different things which are not really susceptible of a money valuation in any true sense” (at 515–516). In ATU and others v ATY [2015] 4 SLR 1159, Lee Seiu Kin J (as he then was) said, citing Greene MR’s statement in Rook, that pecuniary losses allegedly suffered as a consequence of defamatory statements fall within the category of special damages (at [26]). I respectfully agree.

  41. [35] Like the law lords in Dingle, I am not convinced that the distinction drawn by Pollock CB in Harrison between general loss of custom (as general damages) and particular instances of loss (as special damages) is workable, at least in the modern context. The nature of the loss in both of these is the same – it is pecuniary loss arising from a defamatory statement. As such, I see no reason why a claimant should be able to shoehorn such a claim into the ambit of general damages, and thereby cut corners around the usual requirements of particularised pleading and proof, by the device of pleading the claim in a vague manner such that she professes to claim only “general” loss. There is no magic in employing the word “general” to describe one’s claim per se; what matters is the substance, or the nature, of the loss claimed. Loss that is special damage by nature does not cease to be so simply by generalising it or putting a different label on it.

  42. [36] The decision of the Court of Appeal in Low Tuck Kwong v Sukamto Sia [2014] 1 SLR 639 (“Sukamto Sia”) is instructive. In that case, the court made clear that only financial loss that is referable to the damage to reputation (which is the interest protected by the law of defamation) can be claimed as special damage. It is useful to consider the following explanation by V K Rajah JA (at [98]–[99]):

  43. It is telling that the Court of Appeal distinguished “loss of reputation generally” from “fall in custom resulting from the damaged reputation as special damages”, and did not perceive any distinction within fall in custom itself as between general and specific instances of loss of custom.

  44. [37] In my view, it is clear that only financial loss that is referable to, or caused by, the loss of reputation may be claimed by a claimant in the tort of defamation. Thus, it stands to reason that such financial loss must be special damage. Only then would a claimant be required to plead and prove the requisite causal nexus between the loss of reputation and the financial loss he claims to have suffered, and thereby establish that it is loss that is actionable under the tort of defamation (Gatley on Libel and Slander (Richard Parkes QC & Godwin Busuttil eds) (Sweet & Maxwell, 13th Ed, 2022) at para 28-032).

  45. [38] Following from this, I do not think that the reference to “general” loss of custom should be understood as a head of loss under general damage. Instead, general loss of custom remains special damage by nature, but is a type of financial loss or, perhaps more precisely, a means of establishing financial loss. As observed by the learned authors of Richard Rampton QC et al, Duncan and Neill on Defamation and Other Media and Communications Claims (LexisNexis, 5th Ed, 2020), “special damage can include the loss not only of a specific contract or of any specific customers but also a general loss of business” (at para 25.32). A claimant who claims to have suffered financial loss can therefore prove his loss at a general level – by showing a general fall in income or profits – rather than having to prove, on a specific level, individual customers or contracts that have been lost (Continental Steel at [238]). This is accurately stated by the learned editors of McGregor as follows (at para 47-022):

  46. A general loss of custom is thus special damage, albeit it is, to use the words of McGregor, constituted by “a generalised statement of special damage in pleading and general evidence of special damage in proof”.

  47. [39] McGregor (at para 47-022) cites, as an example of this, the case of Hartley v Herring (1799) 101 ER 1305 (“Hartley”). There, the plaintiff was a clergyman who preached to a certain congregation of persons and, by reason of this, received considerable profits and emoluments. As a result of the defendant’s slander of him amongst persons who frequented his chapel, the plaintiff fell into disgrace with the members of his congregation who refused to permit him to preach at their chapel, ceased giving him their support and thereby caused him financial loss. The issue before the court was whether the plaintiff could establish special damage without having to identify with precision the persons who, in consequence of the defendant’s slander, had withdrawn their support of him. Lord Kenyon CJ answered this in the negative (at 133):

  48. [40] I am of the view that this is also the better explanation in modern times for the decisions in Evans and Harrison which I have referred to at [28] and [29] above. It bears recalling that the specific issue that was considered by the courts was not really one of pleading, but whether a court could receive evidence of a plaintiff’s financial loss in the form of a general loss of business or custom, and this was answered in the affirmative in both cases. In this regard, both cases are entirely consistent with Hartley, and indeed, Pollock CB’s statement in Harrison that it was “impossible [for the plaintiff] to allege special damage” as “[a] man does not know who are his customers” but may see “that his business has fallen off very much”, is strikingly similar to the point made by Lord Kenyon CJ in Hartley vis-à-vis the clergyman’s inability to state all the names of his congregation. Moreover, given that Pollock CB in Harrison made clear that a general loss of business was acceptable evidence subject to the caveat that the court “must not take it for granted that the whole of it was attributable to [the] libel”, it is apparent that his Lordship was alive to the need to prove a causal link between the defamatory statement and the general loss of business. This tracks exactly the point made by the Court of Appeal in Sukamto Sia on the need to prove the causal nexus between the alleged financial loss and the defamatory statement.

  49. [41] Given this, I consider that Evans and Harrison, when properly viewed in the context of the modern law, are not authorities that sustain a claim for general damages for general loss of custom. Instead, despite the perhaps infelicitous use of “general damage” and “special damage” therein, Evans and Harrison are consistent with, and thus ought in my view to be viewed as, early analogues for what is currently understood as a claim for special damages taking the form of general loss of custom. It is thus clear, to my mind, that loss of earnings, business and clientele is a claim for special damage which must be pleaded with particularity and proven by evidence.

  50. The plaintiff’s claim for loss of earnings, business and clientele must be advanced as a claim for special damage

  51. [42] Returning to the present case, the direct consequence of my conclusion above is that the plaintiff cannot indirectly mount a claim for her loss of earnings, business and clientele under the guise of her claim for general damages. It is not permissible because, as explained above, such loss is conceptually not part of the damage that the law of defamation presumes as general damage flowing from a defamatory statement. Any claim for such loss must be advanced as a claim for special damages distinct and independent of the plaintiff’s claim for general damages. I thus reject the plaintiff’s invitation to take into account her supposed loss of earnings, business and clientele when assessing her entitlement to general damages.

  52. [43] To be clear, I do not mean to say that the plaintiff’s claim for loss in earnings, business and clientele is doomed to fail on the basis that she has not uttered the words “special damage” anywhere in her pleadings per se. That is not what the law of pleading requires. It is well-established that pleadings should not be approached in a mechanistic or rigid manner; it is the substance rather than the form which matters. As Sundaresh Menon CJ explained in How Weng Fan and others v Sengkang Town Council and other appeals [2023] 2 SLR 235 (“How Weng Fan”), only material facts need to be pleaded, and the particular legal result flowing from the material facts need not always be pleaded (at [19]). The same ought to apply vis-à-vis the legal characterisation of material facts as to whether they relate to general damage or special damage. This emerges from the Court of Appeal’s decision in Lee Chee Wei v Tan Hor Peow Victor [2007] 3 SLR(R) 537, in which the court referred to the Malaysian case of Lim Eng Kay v Jaafar bin Mohamed Said [1982] 2 MLJ 156, where the Malaysian court awarded special damages despite the claimant having incorrectly pleaded them as general damages. The Court of Appeal commended this as “amply illustrating the pragmatic judicial approach that eschews refusal of a claim purely on account of a technical error of pleading” (at [63]). A similar point was made in the decision of the English High Court in Arroyo and others v Equion Energia Ltd [2013] EWHC 3150 (TCC), where Stuart-Smith J (as he then was) said (at [14]):

  53. [44] It would thus not be correct to disregard the plaintiff’s reference to her loss of earnings, business and clientele simply on account of her disavowal of special damages in her closing submissions or the mere claim for “damages” in the SOC if, despite this, the material facts supporting the existence of such loss are adequately pleaded. Indeed, the flexible approach to pleadings manifests in respect of another aspect of the plaintiff’s case, namely, her claim for aggravated damages. As I have explained above, aggravated damages are, strictly speaking, an example of special damages which must also be specifically pleaded (see [22] above). There is therefore an internal inconsistency in the plaintiff’s submissions by her mounting a claim for aggravated damages while also disavowing any claim for special damages. But, seeing as to how the claim for aggravated damages and the material facts relevant to aggravation have been pleaded, there would be no basis to use the plaintiff’s disclaimer of a claim for special damages to override her pleadings and submissions on aggravated damages.

  54. [46] With these principles in mind, I come to the facts of the present case. As mentioned at [42] above, I do not accept the plaintiff’s invitation to factor in her alleged loss of earnings, business and clientele in the assessment of her general damages. However, while the plaintiff has expressly disavowed a claim for this loss under the banner of special damages, I will, for her benefit, assess if a claim of this nature for her alleged loss of earnings, business and clientele is nonetheless made out. This is because, applying the Prejudice Principle, I am satisfied having regard to the evidence that was led both at the liability and assessment of damages phases that it was appreciated by the defendant and her counsel that the plaintiff was alleging such loss.

  55. [47] Among other things, this is clear from how the plaintiff had already stated in her affidavit of evidence-in-chief (“AEIC”) dated 11 March 2022 for the trial on liability (“Plaintiff’s AEIC (Liability)”) that she had “lost up to a million dollars of potential clients of legal works from 2018 posting till today”, before elaborating as follows:

  56. [48] Further, in the cross-examination of the plaintiff by the defendant’s counsel at the liability stage, the defendant’s counsel referred to these aspects of the Plaintiff’s AEIC (Liability) and questioned the plaintiff on her quantification of her loss as “up to a million dollars of potential clients” and “$500,000” at some length. Subsequently, at the trial on assessment of damages, the defendant’s counsel also questioned the plaintiff on her supposed loss of clients and indeed, put to the plaintiff that her quantification was speculative. Given all of this, it is indisputable that the defendant had sufficient notice of, and did in fact address, the plaintiff’s allegation of her loss of earnings, business and clientele. Accordingly, in my judgment, no irreparable prejudice would be caused to the defendant if the court were to consider the plaintiff’s claim for such loss.

  57. The plaintiff’s claim for loss of earnings, business and clientele is not made out

  58. [49] However, while I am willing to proceed on the basis that the plaintiff is entitled to make a claim for special damages in respect of her loss of earnings, business and clientele, I find that the evidence before the court falls woefully short of establishing such a claim.

  59. [50] The plaintiff seems to have taken the approach that, because she has no way of knowing the specific identities or numbers of potential clients that have decided against engaging her services due to the defamatory statements, she need not, or at least cannot, lead any evidence to support her quantification of her loss. Thus, in her AEIC dated 26 June 2024 for the trial on assessment of damages (“Plaintiff’s AEIC (AD)”), she makes much of this uncertainty and states that:

  60. [51] I reject this approach. I do not doubt that, logically, it is difficult if not impossible for one to know the identities and numbers of persons who have chosen not to engage her services as these are, in a sense, “unknown unknowns”. But it does not follow that because the plaintiff is unable to identify specific potential clients that she has lost, it is impossible for her to adduce any evidence to quantify the actual loss that she has suffered.

  61. [52] In my view, the plaintiff’s position is indistinguishable from that of the plaintiff clergyman in Hartley. It would be recalled that the court in that case agreed that it was impossible, if not at least impracticable, to require the clergyman to state all the members of his congregation who had been repulsed by him following the defendant’s defamation. The solution to this was not to dispense with the need for any evidence of the plaintiff’s loss altogether. Rather, the court held that general evidence of the plaintiff’s loss of his station, as well as the profits and emoluments he had earlier received, would suffice to establish his loss. So, too, was the position of the plaintiffs in Evans and Harrison. The innkeeper in Evans could not sensibly be expected to list the names of persons who had decided not to patronise his establishment after the defamation. Thus, it sufficed to lead evidence of the change in level of profits before and after the defamation. And in Harrison, the plaintiff was held to be able to establish the loss he had suffered by showing the falling off in circulation of his newspaper. These are all instances of what I have referred to above (citing McGregor) as special damage – viz, financial loss – proved by “a generalised statement of special damage in pleading and general evidence of special damage in proof” (see [38] above).

  62. [53] In the present case, while the plaintiff may be unable to name with specificity the potential clients and business streams that she may have lost, she could have established her loss of earnings, business and clientele by leading general evidence of a change in her earnings before and after the defamation by the defendant. For instance, the plaintiff could have adduced evidence of her invoices to clients or her accounts to show that there had been an overall falling-off in her earnings and the amount of work that she had been able to procure after the defamatory statements were published by the defendant. These are easily conceivable examples of information that were either known or at least readily obtainable by the plaintiff, which could have been produced before the court to provide an evidential foundation for the court to quantify the financial loss that she may have suffered. However, the plaintiff has put nothing of this sort before the court. Instead, what the court has before it are general statements and sweeping assertions of a loss of potential clients. This alleged loss is then said to be to the tune of figures which, with respect, appear to have been pulled out of thin air without any evidential basis or rationalisation as to how they have been derived.

  63. [54] Even where the plaintiff has led some evidence that vaguely pointed towards financial loss, I find that this has also not furnished any satisfactory evidential basis for the court to assess the quantum of financial loss that she has suffered.

  64. [55] Three witnesses gave evidence for the plaintiff during the trial on liability. In my judgment, none of them assist the plaintiff as far as her claim for loss of earnings, business and clientele is concerned.

  65. [56] The first witness, Ms Ng Shu Yi (“Ms Ng”), was at the material time a client of the plaintiff. She gave evidence of how she had come across Statement 1 online and stated that “if [she] had chanced upon the posting … then or just prior to engaging [the plaintiff], [she] would not have engaged [the plaintiff] as the words relayed in that posting … portrays a very damning image of [the plaintiff].” This may establish the possibility or propensity of Statement 1 to operate on the mind of a potential client, but it does not say anything about the amount of loss that may be suffered by the plaintiff as a result of a client being repulsed by her.

  66. [57] While Ms Ng stated that the plaintiff stood to earn “perhaps legal fees of $30K to $50K” from handling Ms Ng’s case, it is not clear to me why, in the first place, this has been stated in tentative terms when it could easily have been said with relative exactitude how much the plaintiff has charged Ms Ng, at least as at the time Ms Ng deposed her AEIC. This introduced (unnecessary) uncertainty that can only work against the plaintiff. In any event, Ms Ng is unable to speak to the amount of loss that the plaintiff may have suffered from other potential clients not engaging her services. Even if the plaintiff may have earned “perhaps legal fees of $30K to $50K” from Ms Ng, there is no basis for supposing that legal fees for all engagements with the plaintiff are in this region. And even if it is assumed, arguendo, that this may be used as a general range of legal fees that the plaintiff may earn from clients, it would only supply a multiplicand for quantifying the financial loss suffered by the plaintiff from a loss of potential clients; the multiplier remains unknown given that Ms Ng did not, and is not able to, give evidence on the plaintiff’s deal flow or client uptake before and after the publication of the defamatory statements. Indeed, Ms Ng conceded in cross-examination that anything she said about the plaintiff’s loss of potential clients was her own opinion.

  67. [58] The second and third witnesses who gave evidence for the plaintiff may be taken together as they are related. They are Mr Moh Kang San (“Mr Moh”), a real estate agent, and his “working partner”, Ms Zhang Mei Ling (“Ms Zhang”). Both Mr Moh and Ms Zhang had referred legal work to the plaintiff in areas such as conveyancing, divorce and succession and, according to them, they had ceased to refer work to the plaintiff for around a year after Statement 1 came to their attention.

  68. [59] However, both Mr Moh and Ms Zhang said little to nothing in terms of the amount of financial loss that the plaintiff suffered because of them ceasing to make referrals to her. As far as Ms Zhang was concerned, she did not provide any examples or averages of amounts that the plaintiff could earn from referrals by Ms Zhang. During cross-examination, while Ms Zhang stated that the work she and Mr Moh referred to the plaintiff was “a lot of cases” and “very substantial cases” that “range[d] from HDB to private to commercial, even land” and “involve[d] large sums of money which would have benefitted [the plaintiff]”, she did not specify what sums the plaintiff could have earned from such referrals.

  69. [60] On the other hand, Mr Moh did, in fairness, attempt to provide some idea of the plaintiff’s earnings from his referrals, as he said in his AEIC that:

  70. [61] However, there are various problems with the plaintiff’s reliance on Mr Moh’s evidence, chief among which is that the figures provided by Mr Moh constitute his opinion on, or perception of, what the plaintiff stood to earn in legal fees from different types of cases. As Mr Moh conceded in cross-examination, he did not know the actual amounts that the plaintiff charged and earned as he “would tell [his] client that for the actual figure, it is best that they discuss it with the lawyer” and, indeed, he “[did] not want to get involved”. The figures provided in his AEIC were, by his own admission, “estimated figures”. It was well within the plaintiff’s ability to provide evidence on the fees she charged her clients for various types of work. Indeed, as far as her alleged loss of referrals from Mr Moh and Ms Zhang are concerned, it is entirely reasonable to expect that she would be able to show how much she had earned from referrals from Mr Moh and Ms Zhang over the years prior to the publication of Statement 1, and how this stream of revenue completely stopped after Statement 1 was published by the defendant, given that Mr Moh’s and Ms Zhang’s evidence was that they stopped referring work to her for a year. There is no reason why the court should accept Mr Moh’s opinions or assumptions on the plaintiff’s alleged financial losses from lost potential clients in substitution of more concrete evidence that the plaintiff could readily have procured and put before the court.

  71. [62] The plaintiff’s own evidence fares no better. In cross-examination during the trial on liability, the plaintiff was questioned on how she had come to the figure of “at least $500,000” as the quantum of her losses. Her response was that she had done research into case law and the awards that had been made in precedent cases, from which she did a “simple extrapolation” to arrive at “a conservative figure of 500,000”. Similarly, during the trial on assessment of damages, when it was suggested to the plaintiff that her quantification was purely speculative, the plaintiff responded that it was trite law (citing the High Court’s decision in LHL v SDP) that once a person’s reputation was defamed, there was no need to show the exact amount of losses incurred and she did not have to show special damages.

  72. [63] The plaintiff’s stance clearly reveals a misapprehension on her part as to the distinction between general damages and special damages and the fact that her alleged loss in earnings, business and clientele fall within the ambit of the latter rather than the former. Notwithstanding the Prejudice Principle, in practice, a party’s pleadings would inevitably have a knock-on effect on the evidence that she decides to lead at trial such that it is unlikely that evidence would be led in respect of a point that she has omitted to plead. Thus, if a party is mistaken in law that an item of loss constitutes general damage when it is in fact special damage, it is unlikely that evidence would have been led in respect of such loss. It seems to me that this is precisely what has transpired in this case. The “trite” proposition that the plaintiff referred to in LHL v SDP related to general damage and not special damage. Indeed, LHL v SDP did not concern special damages at all given that no such claim was ever advanced in that case. Accordingly, LHL v SDP does not assist the plaintiff given that she is seeking damages in respect of financial loss – special damage – that she has suffered. It appears that the plaintiff has conflated this distinction and thus took a calculated decision not to lead any specific evidence on her loss of earnings, business and clientele due to her erroneous belief that such loss is presumed as general damage.

  73. [64] For the same reason, the plaintiff’s reliance on precedent cases in quantifying her loss is also misconceived. The awards made in precedent cases can say nothing about the actual financial loss that the plaintiff has suffered in this case. Although awards of general damages in precedent cases may be instructive, the same cannot be said in respect of special damages. Whatever financial loss a businessman, or even a lawyer, suffered in an earlier case has no connection to the lost clients and business that the plaintiff may have suffered in the present case. As I have explained above, special damage is damage that is caused by the special circumstances of the plaintiff’s own case – that being so, it is damage that is proved by evidence rather than presumption or extrapolation from case law (see [22] above).

  74. [65] For the above reasons, I find that the plaintiff’s alleged loss of earnings, business and clientele is not made out for the simple reason that there is simply no evidence before the court on which the court may confirm the existence of such loss, let alone: (a) quantify the loss; and (b) enter into the question of whether the loss is causally linked to the defendant’s defamation. The plaintiff’s claim for this head of loss thus falls at this threshold hurdle.

  75. General damages

  76. [66] I come to the plaintiff’s claim for general damages.

  77. [67] As a preliminary point, it has not been suggested by the defendant that the plaintiff should be limited to nominal damages. I consider this to be correct in any event. Given that it is trite that the law of defamation presumes the good reputation of the plaintiff (LHL v SDP at [102]), the starting point is that an award of general damages would be more than nominal. The quantum of such damages, however, is a different matter which I now turn to consider.

  78. Nature and gravity of the defamation

  79. [69] I begin with the nature and gravity of the defamation. The general principle is that “the more closely [a defamatory statement] touches the plaintiff’s personal integrity, professional reputation, honour, courage, loyalty and the core attributes of his personality, the more serious it is likely to be” (John v MGN Ltd [1997] QB 586 (“John v MGN”) at 607, cited with approval by the Court of Appeal in Koh Sin Chong Freddie v Chan Cheng Wah Bernard and others and another appeal [2013] 4 SLR 629 (“Freddie Koh”) at [25]).

  80. (1) Statement 1

  81. [70] In my view, Statement 1 is of moderate severity. In Foo Diana (Liability), I found the defamatory sting of Statement 1 to be the allegation that the plaintiff was knowingly involved in illegal dealings and had forced the defendant to participate in such illegal dealings (at [19]). I accept that, in principle, a statement that accuses a person of committing a crime is quite serious.

  82. [71] However, I also accept the defendant’s submission that Statement 1 was “vague and unspecific in its description”. In my view, this attenuates the gravity of the defamation.

  83. I respectfully agree. If the circumstances of a defamatory statement are such that it would not be easily believed, it is entirely sensible to infer that the damage that it could do to the plaintiff’s reputation would be less. As both Ma CJ and Lord Neuberger NPJ emphasised, omitting to take this into account may result in overcompensation.

  84. [73] In this regard, I consider that a defamatory statement that is vague and lacking in particularisation would appear less credible than one that levels very specific allegations against the plaintiff. As a matter of logic, a specific allegation that is replete with detail is more likely to be believed than a vague allegation: a bare allegation can be answered more readily with a bare denial, but a bare denial is unlikely to suffice in respect of a specific allegation that is textured and nuanced because the specificity imbues the allegation with the appearance of credibility – it suggests that the statement-maker is in the know of details that are not ordinarily known to others.

  85. [74] In this case, while Statement 1 alleged that the plaintiff was involved in “illegal deals” and had “bullied” the defendant, these were put forward as the barest of assertions, bereft of any details as to what the “illegal deals” constituted and how the “bullying” had occurred. In contrast, if the defendant had stated that the plaintiff had, for example, asked her to open a bank account and to use it to help launder money, the added specificity of such an allegation would render it more believable and harder to deny. Similarly, if the defendant did not merely state that she had been “bullied” but that the plaintiff had, for example, shouted at her threateningly or physically assaulted her, that would give texture to her allegation of “bullying” that would, on its face, be more believable. Compared to these examples, I am of the view that the defendant’s unsubstantiated allegations of “illegal deals” and “bullying”, while no doubt still defamatory, are less grave.

  86. [75] The plaintiff claims that the use of the word “illegal” defeats the defendant’s argument that Statement 1 was vague, as it “provided a key detail: that the deals were against the law”. With respect, this misses the point. There are gradations of illegal conduct – an allegation that a person is a habitual jaywalker would raise less of an eyebrow from the ordinary right-thinking man as compared to an allegation that a person has murdered another person. Similarly, “bullying” comes in various shades. The point is not that a bare allegation of involvement in “illegal deals” and “bullying” is not serious in an absolute sense; it is that it is, on a relative basis, less serious than if it had been specific since specificity would have made the allegation appear more credible and in turn, the defamation more grave.

  87. (2) Statement 2

  88. [76] Turning to Statement 2, I held in Foo Diana (Liability) that the defamatory sting of this statement was the suggestion that “the plaintiff was engaged in illicit or unlawful financial activities, made unwanted sexual advances towards the defendant, and did not conduct herself professionally” (at [50]). In my judgment, Statement 2 is more serious than Statement 1, and is more properly described as being of high, rather than moderate, severity.

  89. [77] Unlike Statement 1, which was a bare allegation, the defendant purported to clothe herself with credibility in making the allegations against the plaintiff to the LSS in Statement 2. I highlight three points:

  90. (a) First, the defendant had declared the truth of Statement 2 by way of a statutory declaration dated 3 March 2020. In the declaration, the defendant confirmed her awareness that a false declaration was a punishable offence and could expose her to penalties including imprisonment of up to seven years under the Oaths and Declarations Act (Cap 211, 2001 Rev Ed). A statement made under such circumstances – where the statement-maker is willing to swear to or affirm the truth of the statement and expose herself to the risk of criminal penalties – is clearly more likely to be believed (see, for example, Jiangsu New Huaming International Co Ltd v PT Musim Mas and another [2024] SGHC 81 at [56]).

  91. (b) Second, the defendant had clothed herself with legitimacy to comment on the plaintiff by representing herself to the LSS as a client of the plaintiff, and had also set out in some detail the circumstances in which she had come to be acquainted with the plaintiff (paras 5–13 of Statement 2). Allegations made by persons in a solicitor-client relationship would, of course, be taken more seriously by the LSS as compared to an allegation made by a third party with no connection to the plaintiff.

  92. (c) Third, unlike Statement 1 where the defendant merely made bare allegations of “illegal deals” and “bullying”, the defendant did set out the details of such “illegal deals” and “bullying” in Statement 2. Among other things, she specifically alleged that the plaintiff had: (a) asked her to assist in a deal in Vietnam to “move ‘money’” (para 18 of Statement 2), which I have previously noted in Foo Diana (Liability) to be suggestive of money laundering (at [49(b)]); and (b) treated her as if they were in a sexual relationship, including trying to establish physical contact (para 20 of Statement 2).

  93. Position and standing of the plaintiff and the defendant

  94. [78] Turning to the position and standing of the parties, it is well-established that the higher the plaintiff’s standing, the higher the damages that will be awarded (Shanmugam at [36]). This manifests most clearly in the local jurisprudence in the consistently higher awards that our courts have made for public and political leaders (Lim Eng Hock Peter at [12]). Similarly, the standing of the defendant is also relevant because it goes to the impact of the defamation and the injury caused (Lee Hsien Loong v Leong Sze Hian [2021] 4 SLR 1128 (“LHL v LSH”) at [90], citing Lee Kuan Yew v Jeyaretnam Joshua Benjamin [1979–1980] SLR(R) 24 at [70]). Simply put, the words of a well-known individual are not only more likely to be heard, but also given weight to, as compared to a person of less renown.

  95. [79] This is an appropriate juncture for me to address the plaintiff’s argument that defamation against her as a professional “is worse than defaming a politician”.

  96. [80] This argument threatens to upend the settled understanding under our law that defamation of public figures should generally sound in greater damages than defamation of individuals, and I reject it. The gist of the plaintiff’s argument is that higher, or at least comparable, damages ought to be awarded to her as a private individual because a public figure has a greater capacity to vindicate his name among the public as compared to a private individual. I do not follow the logic in this argument and how it translates to putting the plaintiff on the same footing as – if not a greater one than – a public figure. I should say that by “public” figure, I do not refer only to political leaders – I accept that, in principle, an individual with considerable social media influence could have a reputation on par with that of a political leader. For example, in Liew Wei Yen Ashley v Soh Rui Yong [2021] SGDC 206, the plaintiff, who was described as having a “greatly enhanced” standing and “by no means just an ordinary, relatively unknown Singapore citizen” (at [113]), was awarded damages of $180,000 (at [156]) which is in broadly in the same ballpark as sums that have been awarded to political leaders in recent cases such as Shanmugam and LHL v LSH.

  97. [81] The plaintiff’s argument, in my view, fails to appreciate that the mirror image of the opportunity to vindicate one’s name on a public scale that may be of greater availability to public figures is that their reputation can suffer much greater harm in the first place. If the reputation of a private individual is not susceptible to harm of a comparable scale and magnitude as that of a public figure, the lack of a comparable opportunity for the former to vindicate her name publicly does not somehow amplify the already limited damage to reputation she may suffer in the first place.

  98. [82] In this case, I accept the defendant’s submission that the relatively low standing of both the plaintiff and the defendant is a factor that points significantly in favour of a lower award in damages.

  99. [83] Although the plaintiff is a lawyer with some seniority, there is no evidence that she is of any general renown among the legal profession and I mean this in the most neutral sense possible. Put differently, there is no evidence that the plaintiff possesses a greater than ordinary reputation among the body of advocates and solicitors in Singapore. It is unlikely that a mention of or reference to the plaintiff’s name in a defamatory statement would leave much of an impression on the ordinary and right-thinking member of our society.

  100. [84] On this last point, the decision of the English High Court in Dhir v Saddler [2018] 4 WLR 1 is instructive. In that case, Nicklin J observed, in the context of deciding whether there was “serious harm” to the claimant’s reputation so as to establish that a statement was defamatory for the purposes of s 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 (c 26) (UK), that a significant factor was “whether the defamatory words really connect with the claimant in the mind of the publishee”. His Lordship elaborated on this as follows (at [55(iii)]):

  101. [85] In my judgment, notwithstanding that the plaintiff was identified with some specificity in Statement 1, the fact that she is not, generally speaking, a renowned member of the legal profession means that there is still ultimately a measure of anonymity that would mitigate the damage to her reputation. It is unlikely that the defamatory sting of Statement 1 would hold much, if any, “sticking power” in the minds of the ordinary reader. Put another way, an average Internet user comes across comments on people – both good and bad – on a regular basis. Unless the subject of the comment is an individual who is of some level of repute or infamy, it is not likely that even a scathing attack levelled against that person would mean much, if anything, to the reader.

  102. [86] Turning to the defendant’s standing, I consider that the same can also be said of her. The defendant holds no office or position in society over that of the ordinary citizen. For example, she stands in stark contrast to the defendant in Shanmugam, who regularly published posts on his Facebook profile page that had 89,000 followers and described himself on the page as a “[p]ublic figure” (at [40]). Quite unlike such an individual, there is no evidence that the defendant in the present case has any following, let alone a significant one, that may indicate that her words carry a certain gravitas, influence or authority among any group(s) of person(s). Her words are thus also unlikely to have any particular “sticking power” or to leave a mark on an ordinary reader.

  103. Mode and extent of publication

  104. [87] It is axiomatic that a greater award of damages is warranted where the extent of publication of the defamatory statement is wider (Lim Eng Hock Peter at [33]; Freddie Koh at [42]). It is not relevant whether the defendant subjectively intended or knew that the defamatory statement would be distributed to the extent that it was; rather, this factor is concerned with the objective fact of the distribution of the defamatory material, with the simple premise being that the wider the distribution, the greater the harm of the defamatory material, and the greater the damages to be awarded (Shanmugam at [45]).

  105. (1) Statement 1

  106. [88] The plaintiff appears to submit that the extent of publication of Statement 1 was very wide by virtue of it being posted on the Internet and being available for viewing by the public or indeed, the world at large. The defendant, on the other hand, argues that there is no presumption that substantial publication occurs simply by virtue of the defamatory statement being published on the Internet. The defendant also submits that the court should factor in the informal manner in which Statement 1 was written, as this made it less credible and less likely to leave an impact on a reader.

  107. [89] I broadly agree with the defendant’s submissions.

  108. [90] I deal first with the extent of publication. The plaintiff’s reliance on the fact of publication on the Internet as, in and of itself, establishing substantial publication runs contrary to the weight of authority that has rejected this as too simplistic an assumption (Al Amoudi v Brisard and another [2007] 1 WLR 113 at [37], affirmed in Ng Koo Kay Benedict and another v Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd [2010] 2 SLR 860 at [27], Freddie Koh at [43] and Qingdao Bohai Construction Group Co, Ltd and others v Goh Teck Beng and another [2016] 4 SLR 977 at [40]). I see no reason to doubt the correctness of this as a matter of principle. It is of course true that the ease and speed of transmission of information on the Internet has increased the potential and capability of defamatory material achieving “viral” status and spreading like wildfire. But that is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that, given how vast the Internet is, material that is posted and uploaded there may well also go unnoticed, akin to a raindrop falling into the ocean. There is thus no warrant for assuming, in every case, that a defamatory statement published on the Internet falls within the former rather than the latter category.

  109. [91] The plaintiff must thus prove the wide extent of publication she claims either by direct proof or by establishing a “platform of facts” from which the court can properly infer that substantial publication has taken place (Freddie Koh at [43]).

  110. [92] In this case, the plaintiff sought to introduce, as an annex to her closing submissions, an “expert report” of one Mr Krishna Agarwal (“Mr Agarwal”), ostensibly for the purpose of proving the number of persons who would have seen Statement 1. I have no hesitation rejecting the plaintiff’s belated attempt to place reliance on this report and disregard it entirely. Although the defendant did not object to the introduction of this evidence in her reply submissions, it is clearly improper to introduce evidence, let alone expert evidence, in this way. The evidentiary hearing for the assessment of damages was heard and concluded on 29 October 2024. At no time did the plaintiff give any notice to the defendant or even the court of her intention to rely on or adduce any expert evidence. It is potentially unfair for the plaintiff to seek to introduce expert evidence via the backdoor with the defendant having no opportunity to test the plaintiff’s expert’s opinions in cross-examination or, if she thinks fit, call her own expert.

  111. [93] The plaintiff’s “expert report” also fails to comply with almost every conceivable rule of procedure and substance governing expert evidence. Thus, even if it was admitted into evidence, it would be of no probative value.

  112. [94] For a start, expert evidence must be given in a written report signed by the expert and exhibited in an affidavit sworn to or affirmed by him testifying that the report is his and that he accepts full responsibility for it (O 40A r 3(1) of the Rules of Court (2014 Rev Ed) (“ROC 2014”)). The report of Mr Agarwal was not produced as part of any affidavit of his but attached as an annex to the plaintiff’s closing submissions.

  113. [95] Next, under O 40A r 3(2)(a) of the ROC 2014, an expert’s report must contain details of the expert’s qualifications. This requires, at the minimum a curriculum vitae detailing the expert’s relevant experience, with special regard to the issue on which the expert’s opinion is sought (Pacific Recreation Pte Ltd v S Y Technology Inc and another appeal [2008] 2 SLR(R) 491 (“Pacific Recreation”) at [67]). Although the report contains a snapshot of Mr Agarwal’s educational and professional experience, it is not clear from the information that has been provided what expertise he possesses that renders him a person with especial skill to assist the court. As the Court of Appeal observed in Pacific Recreation, “the expert’s report should state the precise manner, and not merely the general area of inquiry, in which the witness would be of use to the court” (at [67]). It is not apparent how Mr Agarwal’s past experience and his current position as a director of a marketing agency – “Mister Marketeer” – bears on any issue before the court.

  114. [96] Further, and no less importantly, O 40A r 2 of the ROC 2014 spells out an expert’s overriding duty to the court. This is of central importance given that O 40A r 3(2)(h) of the ROC 2014 makes it a requirement that an expert’s report “contain[s] a statement that the expert understands that in giving his report, his duty is to the Court and that he complies with that duty”. No such statement is contained in Mr Agrawal’s report; and since the report has not been exhibited to an affidavit of Mr Agrawal, he has not made such a statement by way of affidavit either. There is no evidence that, in instructing Mr Agarwal, the plaintiff or her counsel ever made known to Mr Agarwal what his obligations as an expert were.

  115. [97] Finally, as to the other contents of an expert’s report, O 40 rr 3(2)(b) to 3(2)(g) of the ROC 2014 provides that:

  116. [98] It suffices to say that Mr Agrawal’s report contains almost none of the above. There is a disconnect between the purpose for which the report is supposedly adduced – to show the viewership of Statement 1 – and its contents. According to Mr Agarwal, his “[o]bjective” is to “estimate the volume of clicks for selected keywords and come up with a media value of these clicks”. In this regard, he sets out the number of clicks on the Google search engine for the keywords “Lawyer”, “Diana Foo” and “Law Society Singapore”. No explanation as to the choice of these keywords has been given. I could understand using the plaintiff’s name, but “lawyer” and “Law Society Singapore” are so generic that there is no clear link as to how they relate to Statement 1. More generally, it is also not evident how the number of clicks on a search engine demonstrates the viewership of Statement 1 specifically. Relying on this report, the plaintiff submits that “there is at least 123,500 searches for lawyer and that means a segment would have accessed LSS website or search and looked at [Statement 1]”. No explanation is given, by the plaintiff or Mr Agarwal himself, as to how and why this inference can or should be drawn.

  117. [99] In Public Prosecutor v Chia Kee Chen and another appeal [2018] 2 SLR 249, the Court of Appeal emphasised the importance of an expert providing the reasoning behind his conclusions, as a report that states conclusions without reasons and which cannot be probed or evaluated is of no use (at [118]). In this case, an even more fundamental defect than a lack of reasoning afflicts Mr Agarwal’s report. It is that, in the first place, it is unknown what his conclusions are as it is not clear what issue his report is intended to relate to or what his report is purposed towards establishing. Even if the panoply of procedural irregularities I have highlighted above were to be disregarded, Mr Agarwal’s report is so lacking in substance that it possesses nil utility as far as the issues before the court are concerned.

  118. [100] The plaintiff has not pointed to any other evidence that supplies a “platform of facts” to infer that Statement 1 has been published extensively. In my judgment, on the balance of probabilities, the extent of publication of Statement 1 is low. Case law relating to online defamation has generally looked at the level of interaction that the defamatory post has received as a gauge of the extent and reach of publication:

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