The goalposts keep shifting as malice of a legal nature takes centre stage in union organiser Tony Papaconstuntinos’ emotion-charged defamation action against businessman and South Sydney Rugby League Football Club shareholder Peter Holmes a Court ... more
Year: 2009
FOI law amendments – more rhetoric than reform
What is the Rudd government really doing with Australia’s FOI laws? Mark Polden reports that contrary to expectation and proclamation, the freedom to know is being severely limited by a whole new set of “exclusions” reminiscent of the Cold War 50s ... more
Paul Aktas v Westpac Banking Corporation
NSW’s Chief Justice at Common Law, Peter McClellan resists “the temptation to generate unnecessary complexity” and finds that the defence of qualified privilege attaches to the defamatory material published, not the defamatory imputations pleaded ... more
“Magic Alex” – an inference too far
Stephen Collins reports from London on how Justice Eady single-handedly resurrected “libel tourism” in the “Magic Alex” case by relying (in part) on the words of our own Justice Ian Callinan – to make an inference too far ... more
Bruce Hall v ABC & Dr Norman Swan
NSW Supreme Court jury throws out defamation action brought by controversial immunologist and kidney transplant researcher Professor Bruce Hall against the ABC and Dr Norman Swan. Hall sued over two Science Show broadcasts that he said accused him of scientific misconduct and fraud ... more
McBride Revisited
Thalidomide scientist Dr William McBride’s defamation action to be heard after 19 years … Putting on the writs in Moree and Canberra … Settlements for alleged bank robber and leading Tasmanian silk … Three Triple M appeals $350,000 damages payout to Olympic cyclist Mark French … Security for costs the order of the day … Nationwide News seeks special leave over doubling of “supporter of terrorism” damages … Justice Virginia Bell has the last word on the joys of section 7A ... more
Andrew Fraser v Brett Holmes
NSW Court of Appeal asked to overturn the first Supreme Court damages judgment delivered in NSW under the new Defamation Act 2005. What constitutes malice, improper motive and recklessness is hotly debated by leading silks Tom Blackburn and Bruce McClintock ... more
Cursing the ordinary
Why shouldn’t defamation jurors give their own personal views on meaning? And what part does “public opinion” currently play in a juror’s deliberations? From London, Stephen Collins traverses the uneven ground occupied by the “ordinary person” in the light of the recent and notorious Sachsgate affair ... more