A three-member bench led by Justice See Mee Chun said there was no merit in Lim’s appeal.
Also on the bench hearing the appeal were Justices Azmi Ariffin and Ahmad Kamal Shahid.
The court ordered Lim to pay Tan and the Star Media Group RM30,000 and RM40,000 in costs, respectively.
Ahmad Kamal said a reasonable man would assume that an explanation would be forthcoming from Lim on the issue of funding for SJK (C) Kuek Ho Yao and the change in the school’s name.
“To our mind, ordinary reasonable readers who read the impugned statement as a whole would understand that it was to seek clarification from the appellant (Lim) to explain the allegation.
“There was an uncertainty to the public as to whether the name of the SJK (C) could be changed. This needed an explanation,” he said.
Ahmad Kamal added that Lim’s moment of clarification should have been while campaigning for the Johor state election, which was taking place at the time that the impugned article was published.
“The issue gained a lot of interest in the Chinese community in Johor and needed clarification. This was an obvious election issue.
“We are of the view that the public possessed an avid interest to be informed. It is evident that the issue raised was clearly a matter of public interest,” he said.
Lim’s suit, which concerned an opinion piece that Tan wrote in The Star during the Johor state polls in 2022, was dismissed by the High Court in June last year.
In the suit, Lim alleged that Tan had made a false claim which questioned his motives for allocating funding for the school during his time as the finance minister.
Tan told the hearing that he wrote the comment piece after Lim had allocated RM4 million to SJK (C) Kuek Ho Yao during the Johor polls.
Tan also said he had been reliably informed that the school had, in return for the allocation, agreed to incorporate the name of a housing development into its name.
The school is now known as SJK (C) Kuek Ho Yao @ Eco Spring but retains its existing name in Mandarin.
Simon Murali represented Lim while Ng Kian Nam and Abdullah Abdul Rahman represented Tan and the Star Media Group respectively.