Vaune Phan@Blogger Wins Defamation Suits gets Awarded with $60,000 in Damages
Singapore, a blogger who has been featured riding her motorcycle overseas various times by the media, Vaune Phan who is has been defamed by Mr. Mark Yeow on 4 occasions last year has won the defamation suits in the State Courts on Tuesday, 15 December and was awarded $60,000 in damages.
Ms. Phan was represented by lawyers Surest Divyanathan and Cherisse Foo from Oon & Bazul LLP while Mr. Yeow the chief mechanic at a motorcycle workshop and the operations director at another was represented by lawyers Luo Ling Ling and Sharifah Nabilah from Luo Ling Ling LLC.
Where the case of the blogger has claimed that Revology has damaged her motorcycle when they reinstalled a camera that was previously fixed on other vehicle and according to her, there was a sizeable gap between the fairing and the body of the motorcycle after it was returned to her in which she published a Facebook post on 30 December that year with document link the incident with Revology.
Later on, the court documented the statement that Mr. Yeow has published a series of comments in her post between 5 Jan and 9 Jan last year which he called her a cheapskate, freeloader, and poser and also accused her for cyberbullying. Which he also later tagged Ms. Phan’s past, present, and potential sponsors, business partners, and another motorcycle workshop in his post where he also subsequently included a link to the post in a message on a Whatsapp chat group where he will use the words cheating and karma in March last year.
Mr. Yeow then received a letter from Ms. Phan’s then lawyers, Parwani Law LCC demanding him to remove his Facebook bost and his 5 January comments but he somehow commented about Ms. Phan again in May last year on a Facebook post by electronics company Samsung where the post advertisement if for a new mobile unit and featured by the blogger who is contracted to promote it and addressing the Samsung with another Facebook account that the company should do homework and find the facts before hiring an influence which ends up the advertisement was later removed and Ms. Phan’s contract was terminated.
On Tuesday, District Judge Wong Peck reject Mr. Yeow’s claim that the blogger popularity was already waning prior to the remarks being made and the judge find his remark was not justified and the SCT ruling stands which Mr. Yeow’s attempts to prove that the blogger had lied during the SCCT proceedings.
In the final, the district judge ordered Mr. Yeow to pay the legal cost to Ms. Phan as well as take down his Facebook statements and refrain from making similar defamatory remarks against her again and thanks to her lawyer, Ms. Phan said that she was not suing for personal gain but to protect her reputation and clients she was working with and she also mentioned that she will donate the remainder of the damage to charity.
