Louise Milligan agrees to pay Andrew Laming $79,000 in damages over tweets
smh.com.au/national/louise-milligan-agrees-to...
smh.com.auPosted Aug 11, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC
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Given she made factually and provably false allegations in writing, hopefully never. Though I do want to see r/australia's spin on this.
Edit: Wait, it's already started. Top billing, this gem:
It's fucking disgusting the amount of defamation suites these politicians go through in order to gaslight they won and everyone else lost.
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Defamation Suites, the student accomodation at Bovine University. Adjacent the School of Hard Knocks and fierce rivals of the University of Life.
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I'll throw in my r/auatralia take:
Defamation laws are a LNP conspiracy
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Let's face it, the mistake was mis-describing Laming's perving and if it went to trial it could easily just be the libel raspberry, but the trial costs alone would be more than 79,000. No sympathy for Laming who is vile and has seized on a sloppy mistake repeated by a bunch of people to act like the real victim.
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the mistake was mis-describing
Not to be glib, but that tends to be a central issue in a lot of defamation cases. I'm not defending Laming in this (not that he deserves it but also because he doesn't need defending in this context) but he did follow standard practice and request only a retraction and apology at first, which I think half a dozen other people were pretty happy to do.
No idea why Milligan thought she was special, but that's definitely on her.
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So the taxpayer foots the bill for this it appears... so the real loser here is the public... yet again.
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The ABC is footing the bill on the basis of "particular and exceptional circumstances". Can anyone explain? I hate everyone involved, but I hate tax payer money being used to settle private defamation proceedings even more.
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Also presumably just good commercial practice given it's $79k and how important social media engagement is these days, you don't want your high profile, public facing employees to shy away from that unnecessarily.
Its probably a timely reminder to the entire media industry that the dangers of tabloid gossip is not diminished if you limit it to 280 characters.
Edit: Media reporting confirms that Laming's actions were limited out to Milligan, and the ABC was not in the cross hairs. I've left the below unaltered, but plainly some of the wild speculation below is off the mark.
Wild speculation: There is a happy little shitfight internally at the ABC as to how much control they can assert over private social media accounts - especially when it comes to senior journalists who are on the payroll specifically for the purposes of providing opinion and/or fearlessly providing journalism on things without management censorship and repercussions.
Wild speculation: The ABC wants to distance itself from any suggestion to potential future litigants that they are responsible for every utterance of their staff in public (especially when not on the clock), but they also want to stick up for an awesome reporter.
Wild speculation: There is a legitimate legal argument as to whether or not she was wearing an ABC hat when she made that tweet, and the ABC's own legal advice says that it is not responsible for it, and this is a creative way of getting around problems with a government department effectively giving free money to an employee in circumstances where it has an (arguably) compelling moral obligation to do so but government regulations make it impossible - especially considering that the tweet was kinda sorta within the scope of her real work, and tangently provided a benefit to the ABC. Especially so if Milligan privately concedes she overstepped the line of her employment contract.
Wild speculation: Laming wanted both scalps, and this is the cleanest solution the ABC could come up with that would still get his signature.
Wild speculation: Politics. The ABC admitting they defamed a government minister is not fun discussion whenever they next appear before a Senate committee.
Still, I also have a question. I find it incredibly interesting that an apparently sloppy tweet falsely accusing somebody of upskirting is worth $70,000, but an extensive media campaign accusing somebody of being a rapist is worth $0. Can anyone explain?
One being provably false probably helps.
Is it provably false? From what I've read, the photo was definitely taken and the only question was over the intention, and it looks like the defamation fears will stop the question from being probed further.
Tweet said he was "upskirting". Woman in the photo was wearing shorts and pretty sure photo was angled down.
Literally provably false.
The criminal charge wasn't "upskirting", and that depended partly on intent. But that wasn't what was tweeted.
Laming has got a bunch of payments and apologies because of loose reporting calling it upskirting instead of just perving on the lady's rear. Since she wasn't wearing a skirt, saying upskirting was provably false, dunk and a free throw.
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