KUALA LUMPUR: Fashion entrepreneur Christy Ng and her company, Christy Ng Sdn Bhd, have initiated contempt of court proceedings against a man for allegedly failing to comply with a High Court order to publish a public apology in two newspapers over defamatory statements.
The High Court has fixed Oct 19 to hear the committal application against J. Vikneshvra Rau, who operates the "archnionverse" Threads account.
In a statement, law firm Messrs Foong Cheng Leong & Co said the application stemmed from a Feb 13 judgment in which the court ordered Vikneshvra, among other things, to publish a full-page, unconditional apology in one Malay-language newspaper and one English-language newspaper selected by Ng and her company.
The defamation suit concerned statements published on his Threads account, "archnionverse", on or around Nov 4 last year, which attracted at least 655,000 views.
The court had entered judgment in default of appearance against Vikneshvra and granted an injunction restraining him from publishing further defamatory statements. It also ordered him to issue apologies in newspapers and on his social media accounts.
On June 25, the High Court awarded Ng and her company, as plaintiffs, RM180,000 in damages.
The statement said Vikneshvra published an apology on his Threads account on March 19 but had yet to publish the court-ordered apologies in the two newspapers.
The plaintiffs contend that his continued failure to comply with the order amounts to deliberate non-compliance with the court's judgment.
On Sept 15, the High Court granted the plaintiffs leave to initiate committal proceedings against Vikneshvra. They subsequently filed the substantive application seeking an order to commit him for contempt of court.
Ng and her company are represented by lawyers Foong Cheng Leong and Rachel Tan Li Ying.
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