Malaysian artiste and lawyers

I was watching my favourite gossip magazine news, Melodi, the other day and finds that it is enlighting that Malaysian artiste seems to be saying the word "He brought his lawyer" or "I have referred this to my lawyer" or even the famous "He/She can contact my lawyer". Although this magazine show seems to skew towards Malay artists, it covers the entertainment industry quite well with concerts that happens in Malaysia and whatever celebrity news worth mentioning.

I think the use of lawyers to threaten others have been spearheaded by Malaysian politicians in recent years when they keep on suing, counter-suing and then defending themselves against their detractors and then some. As a lawyers, I would say, keep it up. As a person, I keep asking, is this healthy? Just look at the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide victims, it took them just a week to decide to sue. I think the presence of lawyers among the victims was a factor too.

I also had some brushes with such artistes and I nearly represented a few, even one famous drama producer and the party who sued this one big named artist. Until it was snatched from me by bigger firms. I was nearly going to be in Melodi that one time!

One of the best thing about having artiste as client is getting the news before anyone else. If not for not having a syarie license I would have been suing a now Dato' titled artist who was then stole her husband from another. I knew their affair nearly a good 6 months before they announced it.

In the early days, lawyers that are mentioned in Melodi would be syarie lawyers when the artistes got divorce from the spouses. Nowadays, it involves breach of contract, assault and even defamation. There seems to be a lot of animosities among the artistes, their associations, the event managements, the producers, record companies and such. They sue, counter sue, got haul to court for drug abuses, for assaults on other people or fellow artiste and some were even sensationaly in artiste-for-hire-as-sex-object cases.

This post is intentionally here to ask one question, was Malaysia like this in its hey day of Studio Jalan Ampas or is this a new phenomena? Hmmmm....

p/s - Bring it on...