Ex-SARS spokesman’s lawyer fights ‘thumbsuck’ R12m defamation claims
Former SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay on Tuesday defended defamation claims for a "preposterous" R12m brought against him by his former boss, SARS commissioner Tom Moyane. The matter was argued at the High Court in Pretoria‚ where Lackay’s lawyer, Max du Plessis, lodged an exception application to have the claims thrown out of court. Du Plessis said the R10m claimed by SARS and the R2m by Moyane was preposterous and those two parties had to substantiate the "thumbsuck" amounts. Moyane and SARS are suing Lackay for allegedly defamatory statements he made in a letter to Parliament titled‚ SARS: this is the inside story. Lackay suggested in his letter that Moyane misled parliament and the nation on the alleged establishment of a "rogue investigation unit" at SARS. Du Plessis argued that SARS and Moyane failed to grasp the legal test for defamation. He said they looked at Lackay’s statements in isolation‚ ignoring their context. "You don’t pick out the words that you think are defamatory ...
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