A last-minute bid by the Federal Attorney-General to protect national security information has delayed an interlocutory hearing in war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation lawsuit, potentially pushing out the trial date.
Nine-owned Fairfax Media has been hit with a defamation lawsuit by Papua New Guinea’s Minister of Trade & Commerce, who claims the Australian Financial Review engaged in a “smear campaign” by publishing an article accusing him of corruption, bribery and money laundering.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has told a judge hearing defamation proceedings against several media companies over articles accusing him of war crimes that he can only be vindicated if he is allowed to give evidence in open court, as the Federal Government seeks to impose restrictions on the case due to national security concerns.
Politicians are “rarely nice to each other” and go out of their way to harm the reputation of others, a lawyer for former Senator David Leyonhjelm has told the Full Court in appealing a $120,000 damages bill for defamatory comments he was found to have made about Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
The six-week trial in four defamation cases brought by war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has been pushed off because of restrictions on in-person hearings and the Attorney-General’s decision to invoke national security law and cloak the proceedings in secrecy.
A Victorian Liberal MP seeking damages for allegedly defamatory Facebook statements has been given the green light to proceed with a judge-only trial, after jury trials were suspended in Victoria amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google has been ordered to pay Melbourne gangland lawyer George Defteros $40,000 after it was found to have defamed him by publishing a link to an article that implied he had “crossed the already blurred line” between being a criminal solicitor and being a confidant to his underworld clients.
Global search giant Google will likely be forced to hand over details of an online reviewer’s identity to gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson so she can pursue defamation and misleading and deceptive conduct claims against the reviewer, which she alleges is a rival law firm.
A judge has refused to summarily dismiss a defamation case brought by a government worker against Twitter, Google and Yahoo over racist, homophobic, anti-Muslim and conspiratorial tweets resulting from an alleged identity theft.
Fairfax Media has failed in its appeal of a judgment that found the publisher defamed Chinese-Australian businessman Dr Chau Chak Wing in a Sydney Morning Herald article that linked him to an international bribery scandal.