Energy entrepreneur claimed headline about different man used alongside his photograph was defamatory
The millionaire Labour donor Dale Vince’s £100,000 libel case against the Daily Mail has been thrown out after a high court judge ruled it did not have a realistic chance of success.
The green energy businessman and Forest Green Rovers chairman claimed the newspaper libelled him in a June 2023 article titled “Labour repays £100,000 to ‘sex harassment’ donor”.
Continue reading...Justice Michael Lee labels Ten lawyer’s comments outside court following judgment ‘discourteous’ and ‘misleading’
Bruce Lehrmann has been granted an extension of time to consider an appeal at a federal court hearing which saw Network Ten’s conduct outside the court, after the judgment, described by Justice Michael Lee as “discourteous” and “misleading”.
Lee said Ten’s decision to offer comment outside his court minutes after the judgment was handed down had caused him concern, in particular the claim the network had been vindicated.
Continue reading...Justice Lee finds Ten’s defence of truth successful after Lehrmann sued the network and journalist Lisa Wilkinson in the federal court of Australia for defamation. Follow the latest news and updates from the judgment today
Bruce Lehrmann and Lisa Wilkinson have both arrived into courtroom one on the 21st level of the federal court building in central Sydney.
Lehrmann is sitting at the bench, alongside his legal team, while Wilkinson is sitting on the other side of the courtroom in the front row of the gallery, in a row of red reserved seats.
Continue reading...Network Ten describes former Liberal staffer as ‘fundamentally dishonest’ in submissions released by federal court
Bruce Lehrmann’s legal team has accepted their client’s evidence in his defamation trial against Network Ten was “in a number of respects unsatisfactory”, but not to the extent that he is a “compulsive liar” or had raped Brittany Higgins, newly released documents reveal.
In written closing submissions released by the federal court on Friday, Lehrmann’s legal team also said the defence “significantly and unfairly” overstated the “acknowledged problems” with parts of his evidence.
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Justice Lee describes some of Lehrmann barrister’s suggestions about Higgins’ behaviour as ‘simplistic’
Justice Lee has said it is simplistic to suggest a young woman could not have been sexually assaulted because she carried on in a professional manner.
Continue reading...Lehrmann has sued Lisa Wilkinson and Network Ten for defamation in the federal court of Australia over Brittany Higgins interview on The Project
Ten’s barrister says network does not have to prove if Higgins had to choose between justice and her job
Collins said it is not the burden of Network Ten to establish that there “were in fact roadblocks to a police investigation, or that Ms Higgins in fact, had to choose between her career and the pursuit of justice”.
Continue reading...Jonathan Coad, who represented former Tory peer, says sorry for unwittingly misleading the media
A lawyer who represented Michelle Mone has offered an “unqualified apology” for incorrectly claiming she was not connected to a firm that received PPE contracts worth £200m during the coronavirus pandemic.
Two other lawyers who acted for the former Conservative peer had told the media she was not connected to or involved in the company, PPE Medpro, and said client confidentiality limited what they could say about the matter.
Continue reading...Lehrmann has sued Lisa Wilkinson and Network Ten for defamation in the federal court of Australia over Brittany Higgins interview on The Project. Follow updates
Justice Lee denies request from Brown’s team to clear court of all but accredited media
Justice Michael Lee has denied a request from Fiona Brown’s legal team that the court be cleared of everyone but accredited media.
Continue reading...Linda Reynolds’ then chief of staff Fiona Brown was first to interview pair after alleged rape, which Lehrmann has always denied
Former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown was dramatically compelled to give evidence in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial on Monday on the proviso the federal court’s live stream was disabled while she was in the witness box.
Brown was Senator Linda Reynolds’ chief of staff at the time Brittany Higgins claims Lehrmann raped her on the ministerial couch, and was the first person to interview both of them. She took contemporaneous notes.
Continue reading...Court also told Seven Network paid Lehrmann’s rent for 12 months to compensate him for two interviews with the Spotlight program
Brittany Higgins has taken the stand in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson at the start of evidence the defence says will be “graphic and distressing”.
Network Ten’s barrister, Matt Collins KC, said Higgins will tell the court about being allegedly sexually assaulted by Lehrmann in senator Linda Reynolds’ office in 2019 after a night when she had consumed at least 12 vodkas and was “more drunk than she had ever been in her life”.
Continue reading...At defamation trial against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, Lehrmann says two later emails he sent Higgins failed to mention evening because it was ‘uneventful’
Bruce Lehrmann has denied during his defamation trial having sexual intercourse with Brittany Higgins while she was “semi-conscious or passed out” on a couch in Parliament House.
At Lehrmann’s civil case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, Matt Collins KC for Ten put a series of propositions to him about what happened between 1.48am and 2.30am on 23 March 2019.
Continue reading...Free speech advocate Hisham Kassem sentenced for defaming former minister Kamal Abu Eita
A court in Cairo has sentenced a former newspaper publisher, free speech advocate and rights activist to six months in prison, in a trial observers say constitutes an attack on a leading critic of the Egyptian state.
Hisham Kassem, the former publisher of Al Masry Al Youm newspaper, received six months in detention and a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (approximately £523) for slandering and defaming Kamal Abu Eita. Abu Eita is a former minister and current member of Egypt’s presidential pardon committee, tasked with granting clemency towards some of the tens of thousands of detainees in the Egyptian prison system.
Continue reading...Ex-soldier lost case against three newspapers in June with trial judge finding they had proven on the balance of probabilities that Roberts-Smith murdered unarmed civilians in Afghanistan
Ben Roberts-Smith has launched an appeal after he lost his war crimes defamation trial in the federal court.
Justice Anthony Besanko found in June that three newspapers had proven Roberts-Smith had, on the balance of probabilities, murdered unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian military in Afghanistan.
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Continue reading...Higgins had called on the senator to ‘stop’ after Reynolds confirmed she intended to refer commonwealth’s settlement with Higgins to anti-corruption watchdog
Brittany Higgins has revealed she has received a defamation threat from her former boss Linda Reynolds over an Instagram post that included a list of complaints against the senator.
Reynolds has responded by accusing Higgins of “defamation of my character”.
Continue reading...Documents seen by Open Democracy show UK firm got approval to engage with Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin
British lawyers were given government dispensation to bypass sanctions in order to help Yevgeny Prigozhin, the controversial Russian businessman and Wagner group founder, sue a journalist, according to documents made available to the website Open Democracy.
The documents concern a libel case brought by Prigozhin against Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative group Bellingcat, in 2021. The revelations will raise further questions about the abuse of UK libel law by the super-rich.
Continue reading...Heston Russell’s lawyer tells federal court readers were given ‘impression’ he was responsible for shooting an unarmed prisoner in Afghanistan
Lawyers for a former special forces officer have argued an ABC article portrayed him as a war criminal, despite not directly alleging he had committed crimes.
Heston Russell is suing the ABC and two of its investigative journalists over stories published in 2020 and 2021 which he argues gave readers the “impression” he was responsible for shooting an unarmed prisoner and was being investigated.
Continue reading...Editors urge ministers to end ‘endemic’ use of Slapps – legal cases designed to hinder investigations
A coalition of senior journalists and editors from across the political spectrum are calling on the justice secretary, Dominic Raab, to back a proposed law to tackle the global super-rich’s use of “abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations”.
More than 70 newspaper editors, publishers and media lawyers wrote to Raab on Tuesday demanding that the government take urgent action to stop oligarchs and kleptocrats from using their fortunes to exploit British courts, intimidating and silencing investigative journalists with strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps).
Continue reading...Poldark creator among writers and film-makers lining up to reconstruct spat between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney
A big-budget drama featuring major characters in the Wagatha Christie case is to join the slew of documentaries already in production, as the race to bring to the small screen the rancorous details of the high court battle that ended on Friday hots up.
The row between two high-profile footballers’ wives, which ended last week when the judge ruled in favour of Coleen Rooney, is to be turned into television serial by one of Britain’s leading screenwriters. Debbie Horsfield, who adapted Poldark for the 2015-19 BBC series, is to write a drama chronicling the notorious public row between Rebekah Vardy, wife of leading Leicester goal scorer Jamie Vardy, and Coleen Rooney, wife of Wayne, the renowned former England player and, until last month, manager of Derby County.
Continue reading...Ex-soldier’s barrister tells court that reporters ‘jumped on rumours’, while newspapers’ counsel alleges Roberts-Smith ‘prepared to lie under oath’
Ben Roberts-Smith’s long-running defamation case has concluded in Sydney, with his barrister telling the court the decorated former soldier was the victim of a “war of words” from jealous comrades intent on tearing down his reputation.
After more than 100 days of evidence, 42 witnesses from around the world, hundreds of exhibits, and thousands of pages of transcripts, the year-long trial ended with closing submissions from legal teams Wednesday morning.
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Continue reading...Lawyers for Ben Roberts-Smith urge court to disregard evidence of Afghan witnesses, saying the men were prejudiced against Australian soldiers
Lawyers for Ben Roberts-Smith have urged the court hearing a defamation trial to reject the testimony of three Afghan men who gave evidence against the Australian soldier in his defamation trial, saying they regarded foreign troops as “infidels” and gave “inconsistent and contradictory” evidence.
“To say they are credible is incredible,” Roberts-Smith’s barrister, Arthur Moses SC, told the federal court in closing submissions in the former soldier’s long-running defamation action.
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