Wagner v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd

Wagner and others brought a defamation action against Nine Network Australia and others in relation to a 60 Minutes broadcast and a subsequent internet publication about the 2011 Grantham Floods. The primary judge ordered that certain paragraphs of the appellants’ amended statement of claim be struck out on the basis that the imputations pleaded therein were incapable of arising. The appellants appealed this decision. The legal issues before the court were whether the pleaded imputations were capable of arising as a matter of law and whether the primary judge erred in exercising the discretion to strike out the paragraphs. The court found that the broadcast was capable of giving rise to imputations beyond that concerning the cause of the flood being attributable to the collapse of the quarry wall. It was also capable of conveying that the collapse of the wall which caused the flood was due to “man-made interventions and failings.” The statements that the deadly flood was a “man-made” intervention and that what occurred was “not just a freak flood but a man-made catastrophe that should have been avoided but wasn’t” were capable of being understood as conveying that someone was responsible and at fault for failing to ensure that the quarry wall did not collapse. Therefore, the court allowed the appeal and set aside the orders of the primary judge striking out the relevant paragraphs of the amended statement of claim. Unless the parties filed submissions as to costs in accordance with Practice Direction 3 of 2013, paragraph 52(4), within 14 days of the publication of these reasons, the respondents were to pay the appellants’ costs of and incidental to the appeal and the application below.