Former first lady Tseng Wen-hui (曾文惠) yesterday filed an appeal at the Taiwan High Court (台灣高等法院) for her slander suit against former New Party legislators Elmer Feng (馮滬祥), Hsieh Chi-ta (謝啟大) and Tai Chi (戴錡), a member of the New Party's Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission.
Tseng did not show up at the court physically and was repre-sented by her lawyer Liu Tsung-hsin (劉宗欣) to file the appeal at the Taipei District Court (台北地方法院) yesterday afternoon.
Liu arrived around 2pm, filed the appeal and said that Tseng decided on the action after much deliberation with lawyers.
Liu said that the verdict did not clearly explain that the accusation that Tseng "fled to New York with US$85 million in cash stuffed into 54 suitcases right after the presidential election in 2000" -- was not the truth. As a result, it did not help to rebuild Tseng's damaged reputation.
"Although the judge believed that Feng, Hsieh and Tai should be protected by the Council of Grand Justices' Constitutional Interpretation Number 509, Tseng thought that the trio did not have enough evidence when they questioned her for flying to the US with the alleged amount of money," said Liu.
"This case was a completely different scenario because the trio don't fit the requirements for getting protection under the constitutional interpretation article."
Interpretation Article 509 of the Constitution protects citizens' freedom of speech and allows the asking of proper questions that are backed up by evidence against the suspicious party.
"In addition, Tseng believed that this was a simple lawsuit that had nothing to do with ethnic harmony," Liu added.
In the meantime, Liu said that Tseng is still asking for NT$300 million in damages from the trio and will donate this amount to victims of the Sept. 21, 1999, earthquake.
Taipei Judge Huang Cheng-hui's (黃程暉) verdict on March 26 said that Feng, Hsieh and Tai were not guilty of slander. In throwing out the slander charges, the judge also dropped Tseng's NT$300 million civil claim for damages. Huang also urged both the plaintiff and defendants to consider "ethnic harmony" and not to appeal.
Huang's verdict was criticized and described as a "lecture instead of a verdict."
The verdict said that "the plaintiff should take into consideration both national security and ethnic harmony in deciding whether to file an appeal ... both the plaintiff and the defendant should bear with each other and not appeal if it isn't necessary ... to file a suit or appeal will not help rebuild the plaintiff's or the defendants' reputations. It will not do any good for society, either."
RSS