Mirror Newspapers Ltd v Harrison

Mirror Newspapers Ltd and John Fairfax & Sons Ltd (the publishers) appealed to the High Court of Australia against a judgment of the Supreme Court of New South Wales which had awarded damages to Mr Harrison for defamation. The defamation arose from the publication of articles in the Daily Mirror and the Sydney Morning Herald concerning Mr Harrison's alleged involvement in a criminal conspiracy.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the defence of qualified privilege was available to the publishers. Specifically, the court had to determine whether the occasion of publication was one of qualified privilege, and if so, whether that privilege had been defeated by malice on the part of the publishers.

The High Court, in a joint judgment, held that the occasion of publication was not one of qualified privilege. Their Honours reasoned that while the public has an interest in receiving information about criminal conspiracies, the publishers' duty to inform the public did not extend to publishing defamatory material about an individual without reasonable grounds for believing it to be true. The court emphasised that the defence of qualified privilege requires not only an interest in the recipient but also a duty or interest on the part of the publisher to communicate the information. In this instance, the court found that the publishers had failed to establish such a duty or interest in relation to the specific defamatory statements made about Mr Harrison.

The appeals were dismissed.