A strange defamation ruling

Steven Price has an insightful take on the Talley vs TVNZ defamation judgment. He doesn’t say the decision is necessarily wrong, but he is very critical of the reasoning by Justice Jagose.

Price says that he expected the case to be decided on whether TVNZ had a defence of truth and/or whether it was a responsible communication in the public interest. But instead the Judge basically ruled that all but one of the stories were not defamatory at all, as in they didn’t lower the reputation of Talley’s at all.

Prince concludes:

I suspect this judgment will be appealed. One problem is that, because of the way the judge approached the case, particularly in his findings about meaning, there is no analysis of all the evidence relating to truth (or not) and responsible communication (or not) for almost all the broadcasts and articles sued over. So if my analysis above is anywhere in the ballpark, and an appeal is upheld, we’re probably looking at a new trial. Which seems very hard on both parties.

If I was Talleys, I would be appealing. That doesn’t mean they will win next time, but that the reasoning in this decision was rather poor.