A judge who tossed a house painter’s case over a one-star Google review has awarded partial indemnity costs to the critic and said her order should serve as a lesson about the “catastrophic” costs of defamation cases.
From the ongoing saga of the high-profile Christian Porter action against the ABC to “backyard” litigation testing the serious harm bar, defamation cases made headlines in 2022, with winners and losers alike shelling out millions to lawyers to protect their reputations.
In one of the first cases to test a new ‘serious harm’ threshold for defamation matters, a judge has knocked back a NSW house painter’s defamation case over a one star Google review, saying that people would consider “unflattering” business reviews to be expressions of personal opinion.
A judge has discontinued a class action brought against a Queensland law firm over allegedly non-compliant conditional costs agreements, after finding no evidence that anyone other than the lead plaintiff was interested in bringing a claim.
A judge has allowed an assessment of Gadens’ legal costs in a dispute with a client over $665,000 in fees, saying while the application had been filed out of time, the law firm seemed to have done “little by way of compliance” with its costs disclosure obligations.