Dank v Nationwide News Pty Ltd [2016] NSWSC 156

Supreme Court New South Wales

Medium Neutral Citation: Dank v Nationwide News Pty Ltd [2016] NSWSC 156 Hearing dates: 29 February 2016 Date of orders: 01 March 2016 Decision date: 01 March 2016 Jurisdiction: Common Law Before: McCallum J Decision: Order pursuant to s 62 of the Civil Procedure Act 2005 that the questions of fact be determined by the jury as follows: first, the questions as to publication, whether the plaintiff's imputations are conveyed, whether the plaintiff's imputations are defamatory and whether those of the plaintiff's imputations to which the defence of justification is pleaded are substantially true; secondly, the questions raised by the contextual truth defence, namely, whether the matters complained of conveyed the contextual imputations, whether those imputations were substantially true and whether because of the substantial truth of the contextual imputations the plaintiff's defamatory imputations do not further harm his reputation. Catchwords: DEFAMATION – trial with a jury – authority to make directions as to the order in which questions are determined – where defences of truth and contextual truth are pleaded – undue complexity of questions for the jury Legislation Cited: Civil Procedure Act 2005 (NSW), s 62 Defamation Act 2005 (NSW), ss 22, 25, 26 Cases Cited: Dank v Whittaker (No 4) 2014 NSWSC 732 McMahon v John Fairfax Publications Pty Ltd (No 6) [2012] NSWSC 224 Mizikovsky v Queensland Television Ltd [2013] QCA 68; [2014] 1 Qd R 197 Category: Procedural and other rulings Parties: 2013/157118 Stephen Dank (plaintiff) Nationwide News Pty Ltd (first defendant) Josh Massoud (second defendant) James Hooper (third defendant) Rebecca Wilson (fourth defendant) Paul Whittaker (fifth defendant)