Former Victorian Liberal party leader John Pesutto has been ordered to pay $2.3 million in costs in MP Moira Deeming’s defamation suit over statements found to have conveyed that she had links to neo-Nazis.
Former Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming has lost a bid to split her defamation case against state party leader John Pesutto, after a judge expressed his reluctance to have the court sort through her claim that publications by Pesutto carried 67 different defamatory imputations against her, including that she is a neo-Nazi.
A judge has called off a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the new serious harm element in Australia’s defamation laws is satisfied in a case brought by a weight lifting coach, citing an “unfortunate turn of events”.