KUALA LUMPUR, 13 Aug 2009: A lawyer who sued the Bar Council for RM160 million in damages today was allowed to use the bar’s premises to launch his book, Presumed Guilty, after the bar agreed to settle the suit.
High Court judge Datuk T Selventhiranathan, who recorded the consent judgement in chambers, also ordered the bar to put back the advertisement about the book on its webpage.
Today, the suit was fixed for case management.
On 25 May 2009, T Vijayandran filed a civil suit against the bar for denying him the use of its auditorium to launch the book, and sought a declaration that its decision violated his rights to equality under Article 8 of the Federal Constitution.
In his statement of claim, Vijayandran said that when he launched his first book, No Intention To Kill, last year, the bar sold the book for him and accepted commission on the sales.
However, when he was planning to launch his second book at its auditorium, the bar refused to allow him to do so, saying that it wanted to scrutinise the book first.
Vijayandran told reporters that the book would be launched on Saturday at 10:30am at the bar auditorium.
The 54-year-old lawyer and former magistrate with 20 years’ experience said he was happy that the bar had agreed to settle his suit before the case was fixed for hearing.
When asked about the RM160 million suit, he said, “I agreed to withdraw the amount. What I want is to launch my book there (at the bar auditorium), but the bar stopped me. I had no choice but to file a suit.” — Bernama
