Defamation is the oral or written communication of a false statement about another that unjustly harms their reputation and usually constitutes a tort or crime. In several countries, including South Korea, a true statement can also be considered defamation.
Robin Brunskill Cooke, Baron Cooke of Thorndon was a New Zealand judge and later a British Law Lord and member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He is widely considered one of New Zealand's most influential jurists, and is the only New Zealand judge to have sat in the House of Lords. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong from 1997 to 2006.
The Supreme Court of New Zealand is the highest court and the court of last resort of New Zealand. It formally came into being on 1 January 2004 and sat for the first time on 1 July 2004. It replaced the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, based in London. It was created with the passing of the Supreme Court Act 2003, on 15 October 2003. At the time, the creation of the Supreme Court and the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council were controversial constitutional changes in New Zealand. The Act was repealed on 1 March 2017 and superseded by the Senior Courts Act 2016.
The Bain family murders were the deaths by gunshot of Robin and Margaret Bain and three of their four children – Arawa, Laniet and Stephen – in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 20 June 1994. The only suspects were David Cullen Bain, the eldest son and only survivor, and Robin Bain, the father. David Bain, aged 22, was charged with five counts of murder. In May 1995, he was convicted on each of the five counts and sentenced to mandatory life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of sixteen years.
Singapore practices the common law legal system, where the decisions of higher courts constitute binding precedent upon courts of equal or lower status within their jurisdiction, as opposed to the civil law legal system in the continental Europe. The current criminal code was preceded by the Indian Penal Code which was adopted when Singapore was a crown colony. The judiciary in Singapore is divided by the Constitution of Singapore into the Supreme Court, as well as subordinate courts, namely the State Courts and Family Justice Courts. It is led by the Chief Justice, currently Sundaresh Menon.
Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a High Court of Australia case that upheld the existence of an implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution however that did not itself provide a defence to a defamation action. The High Court extended the defence of qualified privilege to be compatible with the freedom of political communication. The High Court found that the ABC had defamed Lange.
Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd was a House of Lords case in English defamation law concerning qualified privilege for publication of defamatory statements in the public interest. The case provided the Reynolds defence, which could be raised where it was clear that the journalist had a duty to publish an allegation even if it turned out to be wrong.
Warren Wilfred Freer was a New Zealand politician and member of the Labour Party. He represented the Mount Albert electorate from 1947 to 1981.
Neutral reportage is a common law defense against libel and defamation lawsuits usually involving the media republishing unproven accusations about public figures. It is a limited exception to the common law rule that one who repeats a defamatory statement is just as guilty as the first person who published it.
Philip North Holloway was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party.
Modern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), though it is unknown whether any generally applicable criminal process was in place. The first fully reported case in which libel is affirmed generally to be punishable at common law was tried during the reign of James I (1603-1625). Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
Adam v. Ward was a 1919 House of Lords case concerning the legal theories of qualified privilege and that of the constitutional defence. Qualified privilege is "a defence to the publication of defamatory statements which may be false but which warrant protection from an action in defamation because the occasion on which they are made demands that they be made freely with the prospect of litigation removed." The constitutional defence varies from country to country in that it is based on the constitutional law of said country.
Grant v Torstar Corp, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, 2009 SCC 61, is a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the defences to the tort of defamation. The Supreme Court ruled that the law of defamation should give way to the rights of a party to speak on matters of public interest, provided the party exercises a certain level of responsibility in verifying the potentially defamatory facts. This decision recognizes a defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest.
Cameron Slater is a right-wing New Zealand-based blogger, best known for publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. He edited the tabloid newspaper New Zealand Truth from November 2012 until it ceased publication in July 2013. Slater's father, John Slater, served as President of the New Zealand National Party from 1998 to 2001.
Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, specifically Article 14(1), guarantees to Singapore citizens the rights to freedom of speech and expression, peaceful assembly without arms, and association. However, the enjoyment of these rights may be restricted by laws imposed by the Parliament of Singapore on the grounds stated in Article 14(2) of the Constitution.
Christine Marie Lundy, 38, and her 7-year-old daughter Amber Grace Lundy were murdered in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on 29 August 2000. Mark Edward Lundy (then aged 43), Christine's husband and Amber's father, was arrested and charged with the murders in February 2001. In 2002 he was convicted of the murders after a six-week trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. He appealed the conviction to the Court of Appeal; the appeal was rejected and the court increased his non-parole period to 20 years. In June 2013 Lundy took his case to the Privy Council in Britain. In October 2013 the Privy Council quashed the convictions and ordered a re-trial. In April 2015, at the end of the retrial, Lundy was again found guilty. Lundy continued to claim he is innocent and in 2017 took his case to the Court of Appeal a second time. On 9 October 2018 the Court of Appeal released its decision to dismiss the appeal.
Lange v Atkinson [1997] 2 NZLR 22 (HC), [1998] 3 NZLR 424 (CA), [2000] 1 NZLR 257 (PC), [2000] 3 NZLR 385 is a cited case in New Zealand regarding defamation claims in tort.
Richard Prebble v Television New Zealand Ltd [1994] 3 NZLR 1 is a cited case in New Zealand regarding claims in defamation and the defence of parliamentary privilege.
Antony "Tony" Shaw is a barrister of the High Court of New Zealand, and a former lecturer of Law at Victoria University. He holds an LLB & BA from Auckland University, and practices as a Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand; his practice covers civil and criminal matters. He is regarded as an expert on Human Rights Law. Shaw has appeared widely in the District and High Courts of New Zealand including successful appeals to the Court of Appeal, Privy Council and the New Zealand Supreme Court. Shaw has also appeared in the Employment Court of New Zealand and regularly appears before the New Zealand Parole Board.
Esther Louise Rantzen v Mirror Group Newspapers (1986) Ltd., Brian Radford, Richard Stott and Mirror Group Newspapers plc. [1993] EWCA Civ 16, [1993] 4 All ER 975, also shortened to Rantzen v Mirror Group Newspapers by legal analysts, is a 1993 English defamation court case. The case was brought by the television presenter Esther Rantzen against Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of The People which had alleged that Rantzen had protected a child abuser after he had given information about child abuse in a school.
