Case:

Brief Facts:

• Mylove Confinement Centre Sdn Bhd (“Mylove Confinement”) is a business providing health services, specifically confinement services to women who have recently given birth.
  
  
• Eliza Ng Li Yen (“Eliza”) had purchased a package of services with Mylove Confinement following the birth of her child. She had checked into the Mylove Confinement for a total of 28 days from 25.10.2020 to 22.11.2020.
  
  
• On or about the day of Eliza’s checkout, she had posted and/or published a public post accompanied with photos on her Facebook account regarding Mylove Confinement’s services and care during the course of Eliza’s confinement period.
  
  
• Among the many statements that Eliza had made in the Facebook post were;

1. Mylove Confinement’s failure to provide adequate support and services.
2. Mylove Confinement’s poor treatment towards mothers and babies which extended to the fathers as well.
3. Mylove Confinement providing meals using poor quality ingredients.
4. Mylove Confinement’s lack of nursing staff to cope with the high work demand.
5. Mylove Confinement’s failure to adhere to doctors’ instruction.

• Aggrieved by this, Mylove Confinement brought a defamation claim against Eliza.

THE DECISION OF THE HIGH COURT (HC)

• The HC was of the opinion that the statements posted and/or published by Eliza on Facebook were indeed defamatory and had allowed Mylove’s claim.
  
  
• The HC stated that the statements when looked at as a whole, could not be said to be a mere account of Eliza’s post-natal experience at Mylove’s confinement center. Instead, the statements made by the Eliza had the effect of exposing Mylove Confinement to hatred, ridicule or contempt and lowering Mylove Confinement in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally.
  
  
• Furthermore, many of the defamatory statements in Eliza’s posting were not proven to be true and that the statements were made with the exclusion of specific facts and context which had the same effect of ruining Mylove Confinement’s reputation.
  
  
• HC was also of the opinion that Eliza, did not possess any moral and/or legal obligation to make the defamatory statement as there is no required relationship that existed between Mylove Confinement and Eliza and her statement was clearly motivated by malice.
  
  
• And because there did not exist a required relationship with Mylove Confinement, Eliza could not avail herself of the defence of qualified privilege.