A judge has found that the ABC defamed ex-commando Heston Russell by implying he was involved in murdering an Afghan prisoner, but he rejected claims that the broadcaster’s coverage implied he was actively responsible as the shooter.
The publisher of the Herald Sun has won a bid to include the drug-related arrest of a prominent Melbourne lawyer in its “bad reputation” defence to the solicitor’s defamation action.
Fox News CEO Lachlan Murdoch has cited the “editorial interference” of Private Media chairman Eric Beecher and CEO Will Hayward in a successful bid to join them as defendants in his defamation case against the Crikey publisher over an article in June last year.
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.
A judge has found Nine should not face an out-of-time defamation action over an allegedly defamatory episode of A Current Affair that aired in 2019.
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.
Nine Entertainment and Marcus Bastiaan have reached a settlement which includes a contribution to legal costs but no damages in a defamation case over a 60 Minutes segment accusing the former Liberal powerbroker of branch stacking.
A Corrs Chambers Westgarth veteran known for his work defending the Catholic Church has left the law firm for rival Wotton + Kearney, taking with him a number of senior associates as well as the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.
Western Australian Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds has reportedly sued publisher HarperCollins and journalist Aaron Patrick for defamation over a book chapter which delved into Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations against former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann.
Former president of the Melbourne Football Club and Clayton Utz veteran Glen Bartlett has lost a bid to keep his defamation case against four MFC board members in Western Australia, with a judge finding the “relevant characters overwhelmingly continue to live in Melbourne.”