The judgment in decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case will be delivered next week, following a multimillion-dollar court battle billed as a test of public interest journalism and a quasi war crimes investigation.
on July 27 last year, after 110 days, 41 witnesses and more than $25 million in legal costs.Justice Anthony Besanko is set to deliver his judgment in the long-running Ben Roberts-Smith litigation.Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service corporal, launched defamation proceedings against the mastheads in August 2018 over a series of six articles, published between June and August that year. Half of the articles are online versions of print stories.
Roberts-Smith – awarded the Victoria Cross, Australia’s highest military honour, in 2011 for his actions in a 2010 battle in Tizak, Afghanistan – alleges the newspapers wrongly accused him of war crimes, bullying a fellow soldier, and an act of domestic violence against a former lover. The legal issues in the case, including the truth defence, were well known, Rolph said. “It is the factual issues in this case that are of incredible complexity,” he said.
The Roberts-Smith decision would give a “useful indication about the limitations or strengths of Australian defamation law before the reform”, Rolph said.
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