Citizens of the ACT were put to a lot of unnecessary inconvenience last week when a defamation case before a jury was settled on the morning of the hearing. And the legal system was put to a lot of unnecessary expense, when it has much better things to do.
Justice Deirdre O’Connor was suing over an article in the Weekend Australian. The case a little to do with the ACT, given that the vast bulk of the Weekend Australian’s circulation is outside the ACT and Justice O’Connor does not live here. The case had already taken up a lot of ACT Supreme Court time in argument over whether there should be a jury and other interlocutory matters.
The reason the case was brought here was because the legal advisers of one side thought there would be some advantage to it and that ACT law permitted it. There is not much one can do about the former, but the latter can be altered, particularly in defamation actions.
A very sensible provision would be that if a plaintiff opts to bring a defamation action in the ACT, then damages should be assessed according to the damage done in the ACT and damages in all the other states and territories should be deemed to less than that. So in the O’Connor case she would be deemed to have suffered most by what small circulation the Weekend Australian has in the ACT, not its huge circulation in NSW and other states, and the amount of money assessed accordingly. It has a logic to it because most ACT residents complaining about publication in a nationally circulating newspaper or broadcast would, indeed, suffer most damage here, where he or she is most known, and would logically take the case here.
This would be a good way of culling cases that should be heard in Sydney and other places out of our court which is funded by ACT ratepayers and whose priorities should be cases involving ACT residents.