Rodgers v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd (No 2)

Rodgers v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd (No 2) concerned a defamation claim brought by the plaintiff against the defendant, a media organisation. The plaintiff sought to amend his Statement of Claim to join two journalists as additional defendants after the one-year limitation period for commencing defamation proceedings had expired. The journalists were alleged to hold the defamatory opinion that the plaintiff was involved in criminal conduct. The legal issues the court had to decide were whether the statutory defence of comment required the journalists to be parties to the proceedings and whether the plaintiff should be granted leave to amend the Statement of Claim under section 56A of the Limitation Act 1969 or sections 64 or 65 of the Civil Procedure Act 2005 (Vic).

The court considered the statutory defence of comment, which requires the defendant to establish that the defamatory matter was a fair and accurate comment on matter of public interest concerning a person who took part in the matter commented on. The court found that the journalists needed to be joined as parties to the proceeding because they were the ones who made the defamatory comments. However, the court also found that the plaintiff's application for leave to amend the Statement of Claim should be granted under section 56A of the Limitation Act 1969, which allows for the extension of the limitation period where it is just and equitable to do so. The court considered that it was just and equitable to extend the limitation period to allow the plaintiff to join the journalists as defendants because the plaintiff had acted promptly in seeking to amend the Statement of Claim and the defendant had not shown any prejudice that would result from the amendment.

The court ordered that the limitation period be extended to the date of the proposed joinder of the journalists as defendants and that the plaintiff file an Amended Statement of Claim within 14 days. The court also ordered that the notice of motion filed on 10 September 2008 be otherwise dismissed, that the plaintiff pay the defendant's costs of the application, and that the matter be stood over for further directions.