The Taiwan High Court ruled yesterday that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) and restaurant proprietor Cheng Ko-jung (鄭可榮) must pay former Department of Health minister Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) NT$1 million (US$30,000) in damages for falsely claiming he had licked a man's ear at a KTV parlor.
The ruling said Twu could appeal the case to the Supreme Court but that Lee and Cheng could not.
They were ordered to pay the compensation because their accusations had damaged Twu's reputation.
In April 2005, Taipei District Court ruled that Lee and Cheng had to pay Twu NT$600,000, but the Taiwan High Court increased the amount, adding it was too low given Twu's social status.
The case first came to light on Oct. 3, 2002, when Cheng held a press conference with Lee where they accused Twu of kissing and licking Cheng's ear at a KTV parlor on Aug. 6.
Twu then filed a slander suit against them and promised to resign if the accusations were proved true.
Cheng later realized he had mistaken Twu for former health department personnel chief Tu Hau-lin (屠豪麟) and held another press conference where he and Lee made a public apology.
Cheng said he was drunk at the time of the incident and that it was his fault if he had mistaken Twu for Tu.
Tu was later found guilty of sexually harassing Cheng in August 2002.
Later yesterday, Lee said she was surprised by the ruling and could not accept it.
In a statement, Lee said that, as a lawmaker, she was obliged to speak for people who appealed to her for help.
She said the alleged sexual harassment was not a fabrication and that she had not intended to make false accusations against Twu.
Twu, meanwhile, said that he would appeal because he felt that the compensation offered was not in proportion to the damage to his reputation.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS