A three-member Federal Court bench granted leave to the National Feedlot Corporation Sdn Bhd and and its executive chairperson Mohd Salleh Ismail to appeal its defamation suit against PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar and the party.

Chief Judge of Malaya, Justice Ahmad Maarop, said the bench would allow two of the four questions of law in NFC’s appeal to be heard by the court.

• In an impugned composite statement, some of which are defamatory and some not, was the trial judge correct in holding that the plaintiff was prohibited in bringing about the defamatory action by complaining only about the defamatory statement?
• In considering whether the sting of defamation outweighs the parameters of contextual interpretation, should the court only consider the following principles of interpretation of the true meanings of the impugned words: (a) impugned words that are complained to the relevancy of the rest of the publication in a contextual setting; and (b) treating the impugned words complained of as the bane and to discover, if relevancy is shown, if the rest of the other statements could be possibly be seen as an "antidote"?

Sitting with Justice Ahmad were Federal Court judges Justices Hasan Lah and Azahar Mohamed.

In court today, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, representing NFC and Salleh, argued against the High Court previously finding that while Nurul Izzah’s words were defamatory, there was justification in her making the statement...