Media

Trial in the defamation case by accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith has been adjourned for three weeks after COVID-19 restrictions prevented witnesses from travelling to Sydney and national security concerns were raised regarding Afghani witnesses set to give evidence.

Liberal party politician Andrew Laming has hit ABC Four Corners journalist Louise Milligan with a defamation lawsuit over allegedly “sensational, accusatory and spiteful” tweets intended to “irrevocably damage” his reputation.

Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has denied claims that he assaulted a woman with whom he was having an affair and took naked photos of her while she was unconscious after attending a Parliament House function in March 2018.

Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court that he exchanged emails with SAS witnesses about a compound where he was alleged to have murdered a man with a prosthetic leg in the lead-up to his defamation trial.

War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has denied allegations that he sent off threatening letters to a former SAS colleague to stop him from talking to the media and a defence inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

Law firm Thomson Geer has bolstered the ranks of its media team with the recruitment of News Corp senior litigation counsel Marlia Saunders to its Sydney office.

A judge has criticised the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for “ill advised” redactions in documents produced in a dispute between the producers of the consumer affairs television series The Checkout.

Ben Roberts-Smith has admitted that he owns a glass replica of the prosthetic leg belonging to a man he killed in Afghanistan, as trial in his defamation case entered its third week.

Ben Roberts-Smith has been accused of “inventing stories” to conceal facts that would support publisher Fairfax’s version of events concerning war crimes allegedly committed by the former SAS soldier in Afghanistan.

Google has lost its challenge to a ruling that it pay a Melbourne gangland lawyer $40,000 for the results of an internet search that included a link to a defamatory article, with an appeals court affirming the search engine giant was a publisher of the results.