A dancer whose performance was described by The Canberra Times dance reviewer Michelle Potter as “”the most undancerly dance performance I have ever had to review” lost her appeal yesterday in a defamation action.
Three judges of the NSW Court of Appeal unanimously rejected her appeal against a jury verdict last year that the review was not defamatory.
The review of a dance by Vimala Sarma at Hawker College on April 30, 2000, said, “”Sarma has very little sense of rhythm in her body. Not only does she not move with the music, not frequently anyway, nor does she seem able to co-ordinate the various parts of her body so that they all move rhythmically together”.
The jury found that the imputation that Ms Sarma “”as a dancer is incompetent as a dancer performer” was conveyed by the newspaper but was not defamatory of her.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the verdict was not perverse. The article would not inevitably lead to a conclusion that ordinary decent people would think less of Ms Sarma.
The case was brought by Ms Sarma in NSW. In NSW juries decide the threshold question of whether a defamatory imputation was conveyed and whether it was defamatory of the plaintiff. The ACT generally does not use juries in civil matters.
The court awarded costs to Federal Capital Press, publisher of The Canberra Times.
The General Manager of The Canberra Times, Tom O’Meara, said Ms Sarma would be pursued for the costs which had run to about $70,000. Twice in the early part of proceedings The Canberra Times had offered to bear its costs to date which had not begun to run up too high if Ms Sarma would drop the action. The Canberra Times had warned her through her lawyers that it would pursue costs if the action went ahead and she lost.