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 […]
Street-illegal
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Here’s some free advice to any busker accused of falling foul of Auckland City Council’s extraordinary new policy on street theatre requiring buskers to have a sufficient repertoire of songs to last out their performance (maximum playing time: one hour) without repetition: 1. thank the authorised officer kindly, 2. apologise for the breach of the […]
Siemer in Wonderland 2
Sunday, December 7th, 2008Those dastardly Court of Appeal judges, O’Regan and Arnold JJ, having brazenly refused to recuse themselves from Siemer’s case, cunningly affected to hide their biases by asking questions of counsel that rather suggested some sympathy with Siemer’s right-to-jury argument… The real news flash from the hearing was that the Crown explicitly conceded that contempt defendants […]
Siemer in Wonderland
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008Vince Siemer is presenting his case, by videolink from Auckland, to the Court of Appeal. He has told the judges that he has “considerable respect for the institution” of the courts. This submission is somewhat compromised, it’s fair to say, by the fact that he is dressed up as Alice in Wonderland, complete with blue frock, white apron […]
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 […]
Right!
Monday, November 24th, 2008And here’s a political ad complaint I think the Advertising Standards Complaint Board got right. Again, it’s against ACT. This time, it’s against ACT’s claim that: “Safe” New Zealand is now almost three times more violent than the US As usual, the ASCB invited ACT to substantiate its claim. It seems from the decision that […]
Wrong again
Monday, November 24th, 2008I think the Advertising Standards Complaints Board has screwed up again, this time upholding a complaint about ACT’s political advertising. Norightturn made this point first. The ads claimed that ACT was the only party opposed to the Emissions Trading Scheme. The Family Party complained that this was incorrect: it was opposed to the ETS, too. […]
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 […]
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