The federal court has thrown out large parts of News Corp’s defence in a defamation case brought against it by the actor Geoffrey Rush on the basis it was deficient and lacked detail.
On Tuesday the federal court ruled in favour of Rush’s legal team’s application to have all of News Corp’s truth defence and large portions of its qualified privilege defence struck out.
“Nationwide News and Mr Moran sought to justify only a few of the defamatory imputations,” said Justice Michael Wigney in his judgment summary.
The difficulty was their defence was “plainly deficient”, he said.
“The main sting” of the defamatory imputations they sought to justify was that Rush sought to engage in “scandalously inappropriate behaviour in the theatre” and had “inappropriately touched” a female actor during a production of King Lear.
But multiple questions about the specifics of the incident were not answered by the particulars, Wigney said.
Wigney also set aside a Nationwide News subpoena for the Sydney Theatre Company, labelling it a “fishing expedition”.
Rush launched defamation proceedings against the News Corp subsidiary, Nationwide News, and reporter Jonathon Moran over articles published last year in the Daily Telegraph which alleged “inappropriate touching” of a female colleague during the Sydney Theatre Company production.
Defence documents released last month said Rush touched the cast member in a way that made her feel uncomfortable while carrying her on stage during a performance. Rush is also accused of following his co-star into the women’s toilet and standing outside her cubicle until she told him to “fuck off”, at a party to celebrate the end of the production.
Wigney also struck out three paragraphs of the defence’s qualified privilege defence, saying they “did not raise a reasonable defence, were ambiguous, and were likely to cause prejudice and delay in the future conduct of the proceedings”.
Australia’s qualified privilege defence in defamation requires a publisher to show the allegedly defamatory articles were in the public interest and that it acted reasonably.
Wigney said the defence’s subpoena for Sydney Theatre Company appeared to be a “fishing expedition” looking for material that might support their defence.
“A publisher who pleads justification must do so on the basis of the information it has in its possession when the defence is filed,” said Wigney.
In February Rush’s legal team successfully had part of News Corps defence documents suppressed after arguing it contained “rumours” which would “further damage” his reputation.
The media company said it did not make any allegations in its published articles that Rush “engaged in inappropriate behaviour of a sexual nature”.
