Courts continue to award large sums for online defamation. High Court rules that companies, organisations or individuals who create and administer public Facebook pages or pages on other networking platforms, which encourage or facilitate the posting of comments or content by third party users, will be liable as publishers for third party defamatory content or comments that have been posted on their page…
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Recent Cases – July 2019 to August 2021 Stephens Lawyers & Consultants* Publication of defamatory comments on websites, social media and business networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn can cause devastating harm to both personal and business reputation and business losses. Some of the defamatory material published is of such an extreme… Read More
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From 1 July 2021, Victoria,[i] New South Wales,[ii] South Australia[iii] and Queensland[iv] introduced changes to the defamation laws. Key changes brought about by the Model Defamation Amendment Provisions 2020 [“New Defamation Laws”] include the following which are discussed as follows: the serious harm element; the single publication rule; the expanded definition of employees; new requirements… Read More
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Recent cases show that interlocutory injunctions can be successfully applied for to remove defamatory material and to restrain an injurious falsehood.
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Recent awards of damages by courts for on-line defamation continue to serve as a warning to all using the internet that care must be taken to ensure that there is a factual basis for what is published. In Rush v Nationwide News Pty Limited (No 7) [2019] the Federal Court rejected the Respondent’s justification defence on the basis of lack of credibility of its principal witness and failure to corroborate the principal witness’ evidence, resulting in actor Geoffrey Rush being awarded almost $2.9 million in damages – including $850,000 for non-economic loss including aggravated damages – a damages award which was upheld on appeal by the Full Federal Court.
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