Court rejects Tomy's suit vs 'Tempo'
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The panel of judges at the Central Jakarta District Court rejected on Tuesday the Rp 120 billion (US$14.3 million) civil suit filed by well-connected businessman Tomy Winata against Tempo magazine.
The judges stated that the defamation suit against journalist Ahmad Taufik and publisher PT Tempo Inti Media was invalid because the plaintiff failed to name all of the proper defendants.
The judges also ruled that aside from naming Taufik and the publisher as the accused, the plaintiff should have also named detik.com news portal and its reporter Didik Supriyanto as they also published a chronology of how Tomy's supporters allegedly assaulted the journalist and several of his colleagues at the Central Jakarta Police precinct last year.
"It was the news portal that ran Taufik's statement in a report entitled Kekerasan terhadap Tempo menurut Ahmad Taufik (Violence against Tempo as told by Ahmad Taufik) written by Didik Supriyanto. Therefore, all parties should be named in the suit," presiding judge Saparudin Hasibuan said.
Tomy's lawyer Elsa Syarif -- also the lawyer for Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former president Soeharto -- said that they would appeal the verdict and filed another defamation suit that would include the news portal and its journalists as the accused.
Taufik's defense lawyers said they were satisfied with the ruling.
"Other media have also run stories similar to Taufik's chronology. He was not the only one that should be brought to court for allegedly defaming Tomy," lawyer Darwin Aritonang said.
Besides demanding the Rp 120 billion in compensation for Taufik's statement on the chronology of the events surrounding the protest demonstration at the Tempo office on March 8, 2003, Tomy's lawyers also demanded the court confiscate the assets of the publishers and printing company PT Temprint as collateral.
The lawyers also demanded that Taufik publish an apology in a number of dailies and weeklies for three consecutive days and to broadcast the apology on all television stations for seven consecutive days.
Although the account was widely reported publicly in the wake of the demonstration, Tomy's lawyers were only concerned with the one that appeared on detik.com on March 12, 2003.
The lawyers claimed the report had caused their client to suffer losses, as many of Tomy's partners canceled their business deals with him.
The ruling was the second of 11 legal battles, seven of which Tomy is the plaintiff.
Last month, the South Jakarta District Court found Koran Tempo daily guilty of running a libelous article on Tomy and ordered it to pay US$1 million in damage. They have not yet paid pending the outcome of their appeal.