Author Phil Cleary and his publisher Allen & Unwin have lost a defamation case and have been ordered to pay $630,000 in damages.
The judgement in the Victorian Supreme Court related to passages in Cleary's 2005 book Getting away with Murder, which barrister Dyson Hore-Lacey said defamed him and harmed his professional reputation.
A&U contends that it lost the case on ‘semantics' and is standing by its author and seeking legal advice on a possible appeal against the amount of damages.
The jury chose to award $30,000 in exemplary damages, in addition to $600,000 in compensatory and aggravated damages. Interest and legal costs could take the final figure above $1 million. According to Hore-Lacey, an earlier offer to settle the case for $50,000 was rejected. ‘All I was ever interested in was an apology and a retraction, and they refused to do it,' he told the Age.
Cleary told the ABC he was ‘fighting for free speech'. ‘My evidence was simple. I said I didn't believe I had done anything wrong,' he said. ‘I didn't believe that the words should be explained or described or defined in the way that they have been.'
Sue Hines, A&U's trade publishing director, said in a statement: ‘We fought the case on the basis of our right to make critical comment on aspects of the society, rather than individuals, as a book publisher must. And we lost the case on semantics. We hope we are never in that position again but we would have no hesitation in fighting for that principle if we were once more called to do so. Books must be allowed to be critical. Criticism of the legal system and the people within it falls clearly within that. As a publisher we stand behind our authors and the books they write.'
A&U is ‘currently obtaining high-level advice on a possible appeal against the severity of the damages awarded against us,' Hines said.
