Matthias Chang: Martyr without a cause?

By NH Chan

APRIL 11 — In the Sun newspaper of Friday, 2 April 2010 I came across this story:

Dr M’s ex-aide starts jail term for contempt

KUALA LUMPUR: Matthias Chang, former political secretary of ex-premier Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, was sent to prison after he refused to pay a RM20,000 fine for contempt of court.

Chang was served the committal order by the High Court before he was taken to Kajang prison.

The lawyer was cited for contempt of court on March 25 when he failed to apologise to the court during cross-examination in his defamation suit against American Express (Malaysia).

The committal order stated: “At about 2.30pm to day (March 25) … when the court refused your request to address the court as a witness, you lost your cool and walked out of the witness box and thereafter left the court during the proceedings. Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court by virtue of Order 52 (1A) of the Rules of the High Court.”

Judge Noor Azian Shaari had ordered Chang to pay a fine of RM20,000 within seven days, in default [to serve a] month’s jail sentence.

The judge says that Chang had committed contempt in the face of the court.

I will first tell about how the law of contempt came into being. Then I will tell about how it had evolved into what it has become in modern times. But before that you may wish to know,

What is contempt in the face of the court?

If you have read my book How to Judge the Judges, 2nd edition, Sweet & Maxwell Asia, you will come across this passage on page 61:

Contempt in the face of the Court

If you attack the character or conduct of a judge it could be termed a contempt by scandalizing the judiciary. If you make the same attack in court or if you disrupt proceedings in court it is called contempt in the face of the court.

This was what the judge Noor Azian Shaari meant when she told Matthias Chang “Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court.” Chang had disrupted court proceedings as a witness when he walkout in a huff.

The difference between contempt by scandalising the judiciary and contempt in the face of the court is that the latter is dealt with summarily, that is to say, done or made immediately and without following the normal procedures — this is the dictionary meaning. And this is how Lee Hun Hoe CJ (Borneo) put it in Cheah Cheng Hoc v Public Prosecutor [1986] 1 MLJ 299 (SC), at p 301:

The power of summary punishment is a necessary power to maintain the dignity and authority of the Judge and to ensure a fair trial. It should be exercised with scrupulous care and only when the case is clear and beyond reasonable doubt. As Lord Denning, MR said in Balogh v Crown Court [1974] 3 All ER 283, at 288:

“It is to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately – so as to maintain the authority of the court — to prevent disorder, to enable witnesses to be free from fear, and jurors being improperly influenced, and the like …”

This power must be used sparingly but fearlessly when necessary to prevent obstruction of justice. We feel that we must leave the exercise of this awesome power to the good sense of our judge. We will interfere when this power is misused.

Now that we know what is contempt in the face of the court better than any other uninstructed person, we should not listen to a non-lawyer, like Che Det, giving pompous legal advice and telling-off the judge that “no one should be the prosecutor, the judge and the executioner.” Doesn’t our former prime minister know that summary decisions are part of living in a civilized society? The umpire in a badminton match does it all the time, so does the referee in a soccer match and other sporting activities, but most of all, and he should know as he was a parliamentarian, the speaker of the House of Representatives or Legislative Assembly does it all the time at every sitting; they are all, to use his own words, “prosecutor, judge and executioner.”

Contempt in the face of the court means “the power of summary punishment to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately” so as to prevent – as in the case of Matthias Chang — disruption of the court proceedings. This is a necessary power to be exercised only in the most pressing cases so as to deal with the circumstances or situations stated by Lord Denning in Balogh v Crown Office.

The history of this awesome power of the judges

But first let me relate the historical evolution of this awesome power of a judge at common law. I won’t say it is a draconian power because nowadays, that is, ever since 1936 – since Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago, a more tolerant attitude is taken by the common law towards critics of the judiciary.

On how the law of contempt came into being

At the beginning, before 1936, it was an excessively harsh power; one could say it was a draconian power. But why was it so? Because during the time of despotic kings of England, the king’s judges were lions under the throne of the king, and they were wielding the power of the king in the administration of the king?s notion of justice – do remember that the common law of England is entwined in the history of England. This was how Mr. Justice Wilmot (in an opinion which was not delivered because the prosecution was dropped) explained the purpose of this law in R v Almon 97 ER 94, 100 (1765):

The arraignment of the justice of the Judges is arraigning the King’s justice; it is an impeachment of his wisdom and goodness in the choice of his Judges, and excites in the minds of the people a general dissatisfaction with all judicial determinations and indisposes their minds to obey them; and whenever men’s allegiance to the laws is so fundamentally shaken, it is the most fatal and most dangerous obstruction of justice, and, in my opinion, calls out for a more rapid and immediate redress than any other obstruction whatsoever; not for the sake of the Judges, as private individuals, but because they are the channels by which the King’s justice is conveyed to the people.

In 1788 in the case of R v Watson 2 Term Reports (Durnford and East) 199, 205 (1788) Mr. Justice Buller expressed similar sentiments:

Nothing can be of greater importance to the welfare of the public than to put a stop to the animadversions and censures which are so frequently made on courts of justice in this country. They can be of no service, and may be attended with the most mischievous consequences. … When a person has recourse … by publications in print, or by any other means, to calumniate the proceedings of a Court of justice, the obvious tendency of it is to weaken the administration of justice, and in consequence to sap the very foundation of the Constitution itself.

And how from such beginnings the law of contempt had evolved to what it is today

Despite the demise of the reign of despotic kings where it ended with the flight of King James II from the realm (James II was the last of the Stuart Kings of England, 1603-1714) – “the grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization” had continued right up to the early twentieth century. “The branch of contempt of court known as ‘scandalising the judiciary’ served to inhibit criticism of the courts by laymen. To a limited extent it remains a fetter on freedom of expression about judicial performance.” — see Pannick, Judges, page 109.

In R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 40, Lord Russell of Killowen CJ laid down the law of contempt in this way:

“Any act done or writing published calculated to bring a Court or a judge of the Court into contempt, or to lower his authority, is a contempt of court.”

This is nicely summed up by David Pannick in his book Judges, at page 110:

“The grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization has, in the twentieth century, continued to lead to the punishment of persons who have insulted members of the judiciary or impugned their impartiality.”

The book then goes on to say, pp 110-112:

English law remained unwilling to leave it to public opinion to assess whether criticism of the judiciary had any basis.

Mr Justice Darling was the presiding judge at the Birmingham Spring Assizes in 1900. Before the start of a trial for obscene libel, he warned the press that they should not publish indecent accounts of the evidence. After the conviction and sentence of the defendant in the criminal case, Mr. Gray wrote and published in the Birmingham Daily Argus, of which he was the Editor, an article [in which he described] how Mr. Justice Darling,

“ … filled in a pleasant five minutes yesterday. … Mr Justice Darling … [warned] the Press against the printing of indecent evidence. His diminutive Lordship positively glowed with judicial self-consciousness. … He felt himself bearing on his shoulders the whole fabric of public decency. … There is not a journalist in Birmingham who has anything to learn from the impudent little man in horsehair, a microcosm of conceit and empty-headedness. … One of Mr. Justice Darling’s biographers states that ‘an eccentric relative left him much money.’ That misguided testator spoiled a successful bus conductor.”

This splendid piece of invective effectively punctured the vain pretensions of Mr Justice Darling whose injudicious behaviour on the Bench was frequently a disgrace. …

Mr Gray’s prose was not appreciated by the courts. He was brought before the Queen’s Bench Division charged with contempt of court. He swore a groveling affidavit of apology, no doubt on sensible legal advice that otherwise there would be even more serious consequences for him. …

Lord Russell, the Lord Chief Justice, … gave a solemn judgment, noting that it was “an article of scurrilous abuse of a judge in his character of judge – scurrilous abuse in reference to the conduct of a judge while sitting under the Queen’s Commission, and scurrilous abuse published in a newspaper in the town in which he was still sitting under the Queen’s Commission.” He concluded that there was no doubt that the article amounted to a contempt of court. … he was fined 100 pounds and ordered to pay the costs.

The above case was reported in the Law Reports series as R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 39-42. This is the case where Lord Russell of Killowen had laid down the draconian law of contempt which had stifled criticisms of the judiciary in the early part of the twentieth century until the judgment of Lord Atkin inAmbard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago ended it in 1936.

Here are a couple of examples of those pre-1936 cases:

i) In R v Vidal, The Times 14 October 1922 a dissatisfied litigant who believed that the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court was a party to a conspiracy against him walked up and down outside the Law Courts with a placard accusing the judge of being “a traitor to his duty.” He was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.

ii) In R v Freeman, The Times 18 November 1925 another dissatisfied litigant sent a letter to Mr. Justice Roche, who had decided a case against him, accusing the judge of being “a liar, a coward, a perjurer.” He was held of being in contempt of court.

But the tide of the pompous attitude of the judges in their own conceit and self-importance changed abruptly in 1936

At page 114 of David Pannick’s book Judges: “More recently, courts have emphasized that only in very exceptional cases will charges of contempt be brought against those who criticize the judiciary.”

Lord Atkin explained it in the Privy Council case of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago [1936] AC 322, at p 335:

… whether the authority and position of an individual judge, or the due administration of justice, is concerned, no wrong is committed by any member of the public who exercises the ordinary right of criticising, in good faith, in private or public, the public act done in the seat of justice. The path of criticism is a public way: the wrong-headed are permitted to err therein; provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are genuinely exercising a right of criticism, and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune. Justice is not a cloistered virtue: she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.

This case was decided in 1936, so it is embodied in our common law of contempt by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956 which says:

(1) Save so far as other provision has been made or may hereafter be made by any written law in force in Malaysia, the court shall:

(a) in Peninsular Malaysia or any part thereof, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity as administered in England on April 7, 1956;

(b) in Sabah, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 1, 1951;

(c) in Sarawak, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 12, 1949, …

But tragically, to the many who have suffered at the hands of the judges, the blame has to be placed on our Supreme Court for being under the delusion that the common law of England on contempt was that as stated in R v Gray[1900] 2 QB 36 and they have applied it as the common law which applies in this country by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956. They were oblivious of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago which was decided in 1936 and which has since then completely changed the way the common law world looked at the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary.

The result that Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago has brought about is that all previous Supreme Court cases that depended on R v Gray were decided per incuriam (by oversight, failure to notice). The effect is that all those cases of contempt mentioned in the judgment of the Supreme Court in Attorney-General, Malaysia v Manjeet Singh [1990] 1 MLJ 167 have failed to apply the common law of England on contempt as it stood in 1956 – in other words, our courts by applying R v Gray, a 1900 decision, have consistently applied an obsolete law.

The judgment of Mohamad Yusuff SCJ at pp 177, 178 belies the mediocrity of the judgment itself. He said:

The Supreme Court has this far consistently applied the common law principle of contempt of court as seen in the judgments of these cases, viz: Arthur Lee Meng Kwang v Faber Merlin (M) Bhd & Ors [1986] 1 MLJ 193, Lim Kit Siang v Dato’ Mahathir Mohamad[1987] 1 MLJ 383 and Trustee of Leong San Tong Kongsi (Penang) Registered & Ors v SM Idris [1990] 1 MLJ 273. All these cases dealt with contempt in scandalizing the court. … the common law, as has been expounded, applied and decided by our courts after April 7, 1956, by virtue of the Civil Law Act 1956, has become part of our law. … On the law applicable to this case … as mentioned earlier, the principle of common law of contempt as stated in R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36 still applies in our country.

This judge and all the other judges who have decided the cases of Manjeet Singh, Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang and Leong San Tong Kongsi did not realize that R v Gray had been superseded by Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago. This judgment of the Privy Council as to the obsolescence of the offence of scandalising the judiciary has demonstrated that R v Gray is no longer good law. (Emphasis by LoyarBurok)

Therefore, the common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as it stood in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago; the judgment of the Privy Council by Lord Atkin allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used. The common law of England on the law of contempt as administered in England in 1956 is not R v Gray (which is obsolete) but Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago.

Poor Arthur Lee, and poor Lim Kit Siang, and poor Manjeet Singh and poor Murray Hiebert (Murray Hiebert v Chandra Sri Ram [1999] 4 MLJ 321), they have all been convicted of the offence of scandalising the judiciary on an obsolete law.

Tragically, the obsolescence of the offence of scandalizing the judiciary has escaped the uninspired minds of our judges.

Mr Martin Jalleh has suggested that I be charged with contempt of court. I think it was an unreasonable request because such an event would put the entire judiciary in a quandary. Those cases, such as Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang, Manjeet Singh, and even Murray Hiebert are over, bar the shouting, ? the phrase is used when any controversial event is said to be technically settled but arguments about the outcome continue, albeit with little effect on the result: see Red Herrings and White Elephants, Albert Jack, Metro Publishing Ltd, London, 2004. I would suggest that it is best to let sleeping dogs (or should I say, lions) lie.

Even our former prime minister Tun Mahathir admitted in Che Det that when he gave his opinion that the judge should not be prosecutor, judge, and executioner in Matthias Chang’s case — he did so with trepidation. Actually, he has nothing to worry about. We are both on the same boat. Our defence is this:

By virtue of section 3(1)(a) of the Civil Law Act 1956, the common law of Peninsular Malaysia is the common law of England as administered in England on April 7, 1956. The common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as administered in England in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago which allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used.

This briefly tells the history and evolution of the law of contempt up to the present time.

We can now proceed to look at Matthias Chang’s case with a broader and better understanding.

How does the law of contempt in the face of the court apply to Matthias Chang?

As far back as in 1527 there is this tale of Sergeant Roo, “a great lawyer of that time, more eager to show his wit than to be made a Judge,” who had composed a satire on the abuses of the law for which Lord Chancellor Wolsey was responsible. The satire was delivered in the presence of the King. Roo was summarily dispatched to prison — see Judges by David Pannick, Barrister; Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, OUP, 1987, at page 105 to which he has also included the rider:

Nowadays a more tolerant attitude is taken towards critics of the judiciary. Nevertheless, lawyers and non-lawyers remain reluctant to emulate the critical approach of Sergeant Roo.

In times past — as I have explained in the history above — lawyers, “If they have suggestions for reform of the judiciary, or comments to make on judicial performance, they whisper them to each other over lunch in the Middle Temple or in professional journals remote from the public gaze. Such heresies are expressed cautiously, in deferential language.” – see Judges, pp 105, 106 where it also said:

In one case, after Lord Mansfield (Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 1756-88) had given judgment for a Bench of four judges, he asked Sergeant Hill, who appeared for the unsuccessful party, to “tell us your real opinion and whether you don?t think we are right.” Hill replied that “he always thought it his duty to do what the Court desired and … he … did not think that there were four men in the world who could have given such an ill-sounded judgment …

More often, it is only in fiction that the conventions of politeness to judges are defied. The judges before whom John Mortimer’s Rumpole appears are perverse and malign. They are ignorant of the ways of the world. They are differential or rude to witnesses depending on the social status of those who have the misfortune to give evidence in their courts. … Only a barrister of Rumpole’s experience (and lack of ambition) can afford to reply in kind to the discourtesy emanating from that fictional Bench.

Ever heard of the expression “truth is stranger than fiction”? In this country we have experienced for real perverse and malign judges, not the fictional ones experienced by John Mortimer’s Rumpole.

In 1680, Nathaniel Redding accused two judges of “oppression” and was condemned in Court to pay the King 500 pounds and lie in prison till he paid it, seeNathaniel Redding’s Case, Sir Thomas Raymond’s Reports 376 n. (1680). Later that term the court remitted the fine and the sentence of imprisonment.

In the Matter of Thomas James Wallace (1866) LR 1 PC 283, a Nova Scotia lawyer wrote a letter to the Chief Justice complaining that “I can’t help thinking that I am not fairly dealt with by the Court or Judges.” He added that he “could also recall cases where the decision was, I believe, largely influenced, if not wholly based, upon information received privately from the wife of one of the parties by the judge. Is this justice?” Lord Westbury, in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, remarked that this “undoubtedly was a letter of a most reprehensible kind … a contempt of court, which it was hardly possible for the Court to omit taking cognizance of.”

I have found a case after 1936, it is R v Logan (1974) Crim LR 609. A man on being convicted shouted from the dock, that it was “a carve up”, was held to be a contempt of court.

But why am I telling this?

Was Matthias Chang charged with contempt for discourtesy to the Bench?

I should think so too. It was crass impertinence of him to behave in such an unruly manner towards a judge. As a lawyer he should know better than to be discourteous to the court.

If I remember correctly he was charged with disrupting the court proceedings while giving evidence as a witness by stomping out of the witness box in a huff and left the court because the judge refused to allow him to deliver a submission or speech from the witness stand.

The only modern case (post 1936) of disruption of court proceedings that I am aware of is the case of Morris v Crown Office [1970] 2 QB 114 where the English Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against their sentence of imprisonment imposed on Welsh students who had disrupted court proceedings. Davies LJ said, at page 127:

On occasions one has the misfortune to encounter someone who makes a disturbance in court. Usually when that happens it is a case of a disappointed litigant who, from a sense of rage or disappointment at the result of his case, loses control of himself and gives vent to his feelings by an outburst either by word of mouth or physically.

In Balogh v St Albans Crown Court [1975] QB 73, a young man was sentenced by Mr. Justice Melford Stevenson to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court by planning to release laughing gas into the court to disrupt proceedings. He was released by the Court of Appeal because his conduct was not a contempt as he had not disrupted court proceedings. His plan was foiled by the police.

So now we know that the atrocious behaviour of Matthias Chang in court is a contempt in the face of the court. As he did not appeal against the sentence, could it be assumed that he was happy with the sentence of one month’s imprisonment?

Had he appealed, who knows, he could have succeeded following Morris v Crown Office.

I suppose he wants to be a martyr without a cause.