An appeal by the Kele’a newspaper, its publisher and editor, against a Magistrate's Court decision was dismissed by Lord Chief Justice O. G. Paulsen in the Nuku’alofa Supreme Court on 1 September.

The appellants are required to pay the respondent Samiu Vaipulu damages of $10,000 and $5,348.50 costs. In addition is the respondent's costs on the appeal.

Serious allegations

Lord Chief Justice Paulsen found that the defense of fair comment was never open to the appellants and that, “the Magistrate was correct to reject this defense”.

The judgement stated that the allegations made in the Kele'a article against the respondent were very serious.

The defamation case was heard by Magistrate Tatafu in Nuku’alofa on 1 June 2012 in the Magistrate's Court. The case was brought by Samiu Vaipulu, the former Minister of Works and the Deputy Prime Minister of Tonga, against the Kele’s newspaper, its publisher, Laucala Tapueluelu and the editor, Mateni Tapueluelu who was the author of the offending article. Published on 16 January 2012 the article was headlined: “Vaipulu and Nuku exploits the benefit from $80 million loan granted for road renovations”.

Vaipulu claimed that the content of the article was untrue. He did not own a quarry or shares in a quarry. He had not received any money from the road reconstruction works and had not used his Ministerial position to obtain any benefit from the road reconstruction works.

The Magistrate had imposed a guilty verdict on the three defendants, with a fine of $10,000, and costs of $5,348.50.

However, the three defendants appealed against the Magistrate’s decision and a date for hearing was set for 21 July 2015.

Appeal

 The appeal decision noted that in this case the Magistrate found that Mr Tapueluelu was “ignorant” when he wrote the article and that “he did not have a good heart”.

“That is strongly suggestive of a finding of malice. There was ample evidence that Mr Tapueluelu was actuated by malice in the sense that he was entirely indifferent to whether the allegations he was making against the respondent were true or false. ... he made no investigations whether the respondent owned a quarry.”

The author's source material for the article was supposed to be a Parliamentary Resolution, but he did not produce any evidence that the Parliamentary Resolution was ever tabled or debated in Parliament.

Lord Chief Justice Paulsen’s decision also stated that even though the appellants advanced numerous grounds of appeal, “It is not satisfactory that the appellants did not present any arguments to the Court in support of the appeal, leaving it to the Court and the respondent to do their work for them and investigate, research and addess each individual grounds of appeal advanced. Not only is this a waste of precious judicial resources but it will, no doubt, have substantially increased the costs of the respondent.”

The appeal was dismissed, with the respondent entitled to his costs, which are to be fixed by the Registrar if not agreed.

'O. Pouono appeared for the appellants and W. Edwards for the respondent.