1. The plaintiff’s claim for slander and malicious falsehood against the defendant is satellite litigation arising out of the high-profile probate action relating to the vast estate of Nina Wang the hearing of which began in May 2009. 2. In the probate action, Tony Chan claimed that Nina Wang had made a new will in 2006, displacing Chinachem Charitable Foundation Limited (“Chinachem”), the major beneficiary of the estate in her earlier will made in 2002. Tony Chan was subsequently tried, convicted and imprisoned for forgery. 3. The defendant once was a friend of Gilbert Leung (“Mr Leung”) with whom she had cohabited for three years. Mr Leung was to give evidence for Chinachem and the defendant offered to act “as middleman” between Dr Siu, another friend of hers, and Tony Chan’s legal team in the probate action, principally Mr Jonathan Midgley and Mr Ian Mill QC, with a view to providing information aimed at discrediting Mr Leung. The information involved documents concerning a land transaction between Mr Leung and Chinachem which might be used in cross-examination to suggest that Mr Leung had received a substantial financial benefit from Chinachem and was not an impartial or reliable witness. Initial demands for payment to be able to use the documents were refused. But when Mr Leung was being cross-examined at the trial, the defendant informed Tony Chan’s legal team that the source of the documents agreed that they could be used on the understanding that if Tony Chan were to win, the source would be rewarded. 4. Anticipating that the Judge would ask about their provenance, Mr Mill, through Mr Midgley, asked the defendant in a telephone call just before resumption of the hearing, who was the source of the documents and, the Recorder found, the defendant named the plaintiff “Edmund Tsang” as the source. That information was then conveyed by Mr Mill to the Judge in open court in reply to the Judge’s question. It is not disputed that the defendant’s statement was false and that the plaintiff was not the source of the documents. He claimed that his reputation was seriously injured by the defendant’s false statement and the publicity given to it by press reports. He sued her for slander and malicious falsehood. The plaintiff alleged that such reputational injury would flow from the fact that he had had business dealings with Mr Leung so that people would regard his alleged act of supplying information to be used against Mr Leung as an act of betrayal, as helping Tony Chan pursue an unmeritorious claim and as an act done with a disreputable mercenary motive. 5. What Mr Mill said in open court and the press reports which fairly and accurately repeated what was said in open court were undoubtedly covered by absolute privilege so that the plaintiff could not mount a claim relying on such publications. The question was whether such absolute privilege also protected the defendant from liability. 6. The majority of the Court (Mr Justice Tang PJ dissenting) found that as a matter of law, the defendant’s statement to Mr Mill and Mr Midgley was not covered by absolute privilege. 7. However, the Court found that the reputational damage the plaintiff alleged he had suffered depended on the persons to whom the defendant’s statement was published having knowledge of facts which would lead them to understand the defendant’s statement as carrying the innuendo meanings regarding betrayal, assisting an unmeritorious action and seeking to profit from doing this, mentioned above. The Court unanimously held that such facts were neither properly alleged nor proved by the plaintiff, so that the innuendo meanings were not established. The slander claim therefore failed. 8. The Court was also unanimous in holding that the plaintiff’s alternative claim for malicious falsehood failed because he was unable to establish that the losses which he sought to recover represented special damage flowing from the defendant’s false statement, an essential requirement of the law. However, Tang PJ also rejected the malicious falsehood claim on the basis that the claimed damages could not be recovered for the same reasons of policy as those justifying the extension of the defence of absolute privilege. 9. The Court unanimously allowed the appeal of the defendant (FACV 2 of 2018), and dismissed the appeal of plaintiff (FACV 3 of 2018).