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.
Atanaskovic Hartnell has mostly come up short in a court battle for over $172,000 in legal fees, with a judge finding the law firm was in a “manifest position of conflict” in its dispute with two media companies defrauded by one of its former lawyers, Brody Clarke.
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.
Digital giants Google and Facebook will be required to pay for news content under a new mandatory code being developed by the Government to create a ‘level playing field’ in the Australian media industry, which is facing a sharp decline in advertising revenue driven by the coronavirus.
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.
The High Court has quashed a search warrant obtained by the Australian Federal Police and used to raid a News Corp journalist’s home, but did not go so far as to order the return or destruction of documents obtained in the raid.
Seven West Media has filed a lawsuit against Bauer Media to compel the German company to complete its planned $40 million acquisition of the Australian media giant’s Pacific Magazines unit.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has lost its bid for indemnity costs against the Australian Federal Police in a case brought to block access to documents seized during a search of its headquarters last year.
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.