04 June 2023

And in a Spectacular Own Goal

One of the most decorated soldiers in Australian history, Ben Roberts-Smith, was accused of murder and other war crimes in a series of stories in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times, and filed a defamation suit against the papers and the reporters.

Given the state of Australian deformation laws, which hew fairly close to their English antecedents, tend to favor the the plaintiffs, but the corporal forgot the most important rule of defamation cases, don't be blatantly guilty of what you came is deformation:

A defamation case by war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith against three newspapers has been dismissed, after a judge found defences of substantial or contextual truth had been established over alleged unlawful killings and bullying.

The Victoria Cross recipient sued The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times and three journalists in the Federal Court over a series of stories published in 2018.

Mr Roberts-Smith said they contained false allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, bullying of his former Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) colleagues and domestic violence against a woman in a Canberra hotel room.

Publisher Nine Entertainment relied on a truth defence, and both sides called current and former SAS witnesses.

Justice Anthony Besanko on Thursday ruled the publisher had established the substantial truth of the imputations linked to allegations of unlawful killings in Afghanistan, and had established the contextual truth of imputations linked to allegations of bullying and domestic violence.

A second imputation of bullying was also found to be substantially true.

Oops.

His reputation has been destroyed, but on the basis of what has been shown, I think that the Australian military establishment should take a far closer look at the behavior of Roberts-Smith and his unit with an eye toward making the investigation a criminal one.

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