Defamation
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Friday, January 30th, 2009Vince Siemer has filed an appeal against Cooper J’s judgment awarding $920,000 in damages against him. Can a person who is debarred from defending a case appeal against it? I guess we’ll find out.
Coverage of Siemer case
Friday, January 30th, 2009Jock Anderson of Truth writes to say the Siemer decision didn’t slip under his radar. So those readers who take a regular interest in his august organ (a hideous image, yes) will have read about the result a couple of weeks ago. The DomPost also covered it today, under the headline “$920,000 payout for defamation”, […]
Judge awards highest ever defamation damages
Thursday, January 29th, 2009This news seems to have slipped under the media radar: just before Christmas the courts handed down the highest defamation damages award in NZ’s history. Cooper J awarded Michael Stiassny and his firm $920,000 damages against Vince Siemer for his long-running attacks on Stiassny, including $900,000 for defamation. (To recap: those are the attacks that led […]
Defamation: sometimes it IS a laughing matter
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Justice Tugendhart has thrown out Elton John’s defamation case against the Guardian for publishing a spoof diary entry. The judge said it was “obviously a form of teasing” and no reasonable reader would take defamatory meanings from it. Chalk one up on the free speech side of the complete mess that is the sector of […]
Supreme Court to hear defamation case
Monday, December 1st, 2008The sprawling trawling case is off to the Supreme Court. It’s pretty much for defamation train-spotters only – the appeal concerns pre-trial skirmishes about points of pleading (listed below). But these issues matter quite a lot, as they set the boundaries for the arguments and evidence that can be advanced in an attemtpt to establish […]
Siemer strikes out again
Thursday, November 20th, 2008The Supreme Court has refused leave to Vincent Siemer over a range of complaints he had with procedural rulings in the defamation case brought against him by Michael Stiassny. As part of the decision, the court ruled that Stiassny’s reference to Court of Appeal judge Grant Hammond as “our old mate” was not evidence of […]
British Parliamentary inquiry into press standards following string of defamation cases
Thursday, November 20th, 2008A British Parliamentary committee is to conduct an inquiry into British press standards, and will be asking whether the self-regulatory system needs toughening up. It has been sparked by the media’s coverage (resulting in several successful defamation claims for their false accusations) of the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann in Portugal last year.
Daily Mail editor strikes blow for the public right to know celebrities’ sexual habits
Thursday, November 13th, 2008In a speech to the Society of Editors conference, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre called Justice David Eady “amoral and arrogant” and panned his pro-privacy decisions. He argued that Justice Eady was stopping the press from exposing the immoral conduct of public figures. He said this like it was a bad thing. The sort of […]
Page views, not site-hits, needed for defamation claim
Monday, November 10th, 2008Want to sue someone for defamation for something posted online? You’ll need better evidence than the number of people who visited the website, according to the British High Court. The courts won’t assume that visitors to the website will have hunted out the material you’re suing about (unless it’s high up on the home page, […]
So that’s all right then
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008The Daily Mail has just joined the Sun and the Daily Star in apologising to (and paying defamation damages to) Italian footballer Marco Materazzi for falsely accusing him of racially abusing Zinedine Zidane, triggering the famous headbutt in the 2006 World Cup final. The paper reported that he called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore”. […]
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