News Corp has lost an appeal against a defamation suit from former Townsville Bulletin journalist Malcolm Weatherup, after a three-year battle in which the media giant spent close to $1m defending itself against its former employee.
It began in June 2014 when the Australian’s Media Diary editors Sharri Markson and Darren Davidson reported on a court case in which Weatherup had been given a good behaviour bond for damaging a neighbour’s car.
The paragraph referred to the former Townsville Bulletin court reporter as “always under the Weatherup” and said he had left the north Queensland newspaper after “incurring the wrath of a number of judges”.
Weatherup, who took up blogging at The Magpie’s Nest after leaving News in 2012, sued his old employer on the grounds that the words conveyed the imputation that he was habitually drunk at work and that he had been sacked because of it.
A jury agreed he had been defamed, and in November 2016 Weatherup was awarded $100,000 in damages by the trial judge plus interest of $7,479.88. News Corp was ordered to pay costs.
News Corp appealed and lost in the Queensland supreme court this month, putting an end to the saga – but not before the full jury trial had watched a parade of newsroom employees called by both News Corp and Weatherup to give evidence about whether he was indeed “habitually intoxicated” at work.
Weatherup, a veteran journalist who worked for Channel Nine in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s, gave evidence that as the legal affairs editor at the Bulletin he would spend the morning in the newspaper’s offices before attending court, and then would have lunch at his favourite haunt, Michels, where he would meet legal contacts or eat on his own.
“According to the respondent he would have one or two glasses with a full meal and might even have allowed himself three on an occasion,” the judgment said. “He had an arrangement with the restaurant whereby he would buy a bottle and have one or two glasses out of it, and the bottle would be kept in the fridge with his name on it.”
Weatherup’s team called evidence from a former editor, Mary Vernon, who said she never saw him in an intoxicated state, and did not see anything about his demeanour, conduct or appearance that suggested he was affected by alcohol.
Similarly, Bulletin journalist Simon Price told the court he had never seen Weatherup intoxicated at work, he was a good journalist and he had “never heard the plaintiff referred to as ‘Malcolm always under the Weatherup’”.
Appearing for the defence, a former chief of staff Bettina Warburton said Weatherup was “a regular user of alcohol”, his breath would smell of alcohol and she thought he was hungover about two or three days a week.
Another editor, Lendl Ryan, said his former colleague was “quite hungover in the mornings” and that it was common that he would go for a longer lunch and come back “affected by alcohol”.
After lunch, Ryan testified, “you could smell the alcohol on him” and he was __more boisterous.
Another former staffer, Ann Roebuck, gave evidence that Weatherup was “always affable” and chatty and in the afternoon he was “a little bit __more dishevelled and red in the face”.
But the judge said the defence had not proved its case.
“The evidence led by the defendant of the plaintiff’s consumption of alcohol fell well short of proof of a loss of control over physical or mental powers in the context of a disposition or tendency to be habitually so grossly affected,” he said.
Weatherup was “entitled to be compensated for the harm done to his personal reputation, for consolation for the personal distress and hurt caused by the publication and vindication to his reputation in light of the defamation. In the view I take the plaintiff is entitled also to be compensated by an award of aggravated damages.
“There is a difference between a person being affected by alcohol and being intoxicated. There also is a difference between a person being intoxicated on occasions and being habitually intoxicated.”
Weatherup had offered to settle for $60,000 in 2015, but now the payout, combined with costs, is set to cost News Corp close to $1m.
“I was offended and outraged by the suggestion made in Ms Markson’s nationally circulated column piece, which was queried by many friends and former colleagues,” Weatherup told Guardian Australia.
“It was a spiteful fabrication by a former colleague. We were astounded when News attempted to prove the totally unfounded suggestion of a nickname I have never had. As Justice North said in his judgement on damages, News must have known ‘it would never come up to proof’. So News Ltd shareholders may be wondering why the company spent so much money on something they surely knew they couldn’t win – which included an appeal against the jury verdict.”
News Corp declined to comment.