New Official Website CSQlaw

“Hos geldiniz”

That’s “Welcome” in Turkish Language. Actually the ‘s’ has a ‘sh’ sound, because it’s a special Turkish character. The answer to that is “Hos bulduk” (same ‘sh’ sound).

We accorded that welcome because we are presenting to you our new and official Website.

Naturally, we are excited about it. We intend it to be as informative and interactive as possible. So please make yourselves feel at home.

Before this, we had our articles and other information scattered on our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other mediums of social media. Of course, we still maintain those, but this Website will be our main platform to disseminate information and share current news and articles.

Speaking about ‘articles’, we will maintain a steady flow of writings covering a broad spectrum of topics of interest. They are not necessarily ‘legal’ in nature, because this Website is meant for you, the casual layman, our esteemed clients, and quasi-legal professionals.

So the topics can be anything under the sun.

For example, in our previous articles, we have written about how to choose your lawyers, legal price war, Islamic Banking et cetera. In short, it’s “Anything You Wanted To Ask Your Lawyer But Was Afraid To”.

In the old days, lawyers were few and far between. In small towns, you would be hard-pressed to find one. A lawyer was very ‘celebrated then’, and was often referred to as ‘Lawyer Muthu’ or ‘Lawyer Lingam’, the way a Doctor would be addressed.

Nowadays, meeting a lawyer is an everyday occurrence in your life. Safe to say, if you threw a stone, chances are it would hit a lawyer, and rebound onto another. Such are the numbers nowadays. Roughly, in the 90s the number of lawyers nationwide was around 3K; now the number is steadily climbing to 10K.

That basically means that Malaysia is fast becoming a litigious society. In the old days, receiving a Writ of Summons and going to Court was a big thing.

Now no longer; to some people, Summonses are as common as toilet paper. Which is actually a very dangerous thing, because we tend to ignore them. And before we knew it, there’s a Judgement against us.

Politicians love to play around with summonses.

Sometimes they are meant as an ‘offensive defense’ (it’s an oxymoron, we know). Say that one is accused of having a false degree or certificate. Instead of showing the real degree, the politician would make a police report and file a “Saman Malu”. Thus making the issue bigger and more prolonged.

What is this “Saman Malu” anyway?

Well, it is loosely translated into “Writ of Shame” or something like that. There is no such thing in the Rules of Court or any other statute, of course. The correct legal terminology would be a ‘Defamation Suit'.

A defamation suit is not “Saman Malu” per se. You cannot simply sue anyone just because some people make you feel ashamed. Especially if you are a politician or any other public figure, you must be immune to a certain degree of ridicule.

So in order for the scenario to be tantamount to a defamatory case, generally there are certain criteria that must be met. For example, there must be damage to your reputation, the distribution must be wide, there must be an actual monetary loss, the damage must be quantifiable et cetera. Upon allowing the claim, the Court will access the nature and extent of the damage.

This is especially so in times like now when we Malaysians are fresh from going to the polls. In fact, we are still in a constitutional crisis, in a conundrum waiting for the political impasse to be resolved. Political figures are jostling for power and position. A lot of rumors, truths, and untruths are flying around. Some are certainly not pretty, bordering on ugly.

With the additional “Undi18” thingy, we are seeing teenagers joining the fray, spreading hate messages touching on race, religion, and royalty (the sacred ‘3 Rs’) and other things around in social media platforms, thinking that they can get away scot-free with it. There’s a false sense of privacy and anonymity on the internet, so kids should be extra careful about what they post. The liabilities could be civil or even criminal.

These will be the things that we will discuss and cover in our future articles; current issues as and when they surface. We encourage you to subscribe to our Blog in order to receive our future articles whenever they are updated and available for your perusal.

“Tesekkurler ve Gorusuruz”. That’s Turkish for “Thank You and See You Again”. (And here again, the ‘s’ should be pronounced ‘sh’.)