Singapore marathoner Soh Rui Yong lost his appeal against the decision to award his former teammate Ashley Liew S$180,000 in damages in a High Court on Monday (Mar 28).
Justice Valerie Thean also ordered Soh, 30, a two-time Southeast Asian (SEA) Games gold medallist, to pay S$18,000 in costs for the appeal hearing. This comes in addition to about S$125,000 in costs and fees that Mr Soh was ordered to pay in February this year for the district court trial.
In September 2021, Soh was ordered by the district court to pay Liew S$180,000 in damages. This included S$120,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.
Justice Thean upheld District Judge Lee Li Choon’s decision to grant Liew’s request for an injunction for Soh not to repeat the libellous comments, remove the social media posts and retract the statements he made.
However, Justice Thean ruled that Soh need not make a public apology to Liew on his social media pages.
The defamation suit, which began three years ago in June 2019, started during a race at the 2015 SEA Games, when it was reported that Liew, Soh’s teammate then, had slowed down to let other runners catch up before continuing his run. The other runners had allegedly missed a turn during the race, and Liew did so to even the playing field.
Liew was then awarded the Pierre de Coubertin World Fair Play Trophy by the International Fair Play Committee (CIFP) for his gesture. Soh claimed that Liew’s slowing down during the marathon was “simply not true.”
The defamation suit included four other statements made by Soh on two blog posts, two Facebook posts and one Facebook comment.
In court, the former colleagues presented four witnesses each.
Before the verdict was announced, Soh took to Facebook to reiterate his unchanging stance on the dispute.
“To this day, I stand by what I said – because it is what I witnessed that day, and I would never testify to anything else. I have absolutely no reason to lie,” wrote Soh.
“Ashley Liew’s reported act of ‘slowing to a crawl’ to wait for his competitors who missed the U-turn did not happen,” he added.
“My account was publicly backed by a number of witnesses in the media, including Filipino marathoner Rafael Poliquit Jr who was in the same race.”
After the verdict was given, Soh took to his blog to note that he and his legal team found several mistakes in the judgement.
Soh highlighted that Liew changed his story from what he said on live television and in court, and that there was an error regarding the time it took for the pack to catch up to Liew. /TISG
Marathoner Soh Rui Yong crowdfunds S$180,000, says, “Help Me Win This Case”