Law

Defences to Defamation

April 03, 2022 Paul Brennan
Law
Defences to Defamation
Show Notes Transcript

Five Defences to Defamation 

Brennans solicitors
Lawyers - Property, commercial, disputes, Wills and estates 

Brennans solicitors
Lawyers - Property, commercial, disputes, Wills and estates 

Brennans solicitors
Lawyers - Property, commercial, disputes, Wills and estates

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Paul Brennan is the principal of Brennans Solicitors, a law firm located on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, where he practices with his wife, Diane in the areas of business law, litigation, property and wills/estates.

Over the years, by working in various countries, he noticed how similar the law can be. He set out to explain the law in a simple and often humorous way.

He has written several books about law and lawyers.

Further details of his profile can be found on Linkedin.

If you are a person of strong views, who calls a spade a spade the law of defamation will protect you if what you have said is true or substantially true.

Even where what you have said proves to be untrue there are defences :
1. Absolute Privilege. If you are repeating something said or otherwise published in parliament or some other judicial type body. Therefore, if you can convince your local MP to mention in parliament your neighbour’s drunken, cursing, fence disputing, lousy child raising behaviour, then you can tell the world with impunity.
2. If you are summarising public documents or reporting on public proceedings providing you, do not stray too far from an honest appraisal.
3. Qualified Privilege. If you give information to a person, who has an interest in being told that information and you act reasonably without malice, e.g. If you mistakenly inform the police that your neighbour is a serial killer (not an uncommon suspicion). However, to post it on Instagram with photographs of your neighbour with garden shears will be much harder to defend than telling his immediate neighbours in order to protect them from an imminent frenzied attack.
4. Honest opinion/fair comment. If you express an opinion, rather than state a fact about a matter of public interest however wacky or extreme it is, providing you honestly held that opinion yourself and it was based on proper material.
5. Innocent Dissemination. If you publish something said or written by someone else and did not know and could not have reasonably known it was defamatory e.g uploading third party material to your blog. This probably extends to liking and sharing on Facebook and other social media.

Finally, if what is said is trivial and unlikely to cause harm the court will tell you to get a life- so should your lawyer.


© Paul Brennan 2021. All rights Reserved.