Court allows defamation appeals
Leave granted for Colin Craig and Jordan Williams to proceed with legal challenges
New Zealand’s highest court will allow challenges to a court’s ruling that $1.27 million in compensation for a man defamed by former politician Colin Craig was “excessive or wrong”.
Taxpayers’ Union executive director Jordan Williams sued Craig, the former Conservative Party leader, for defamation after Craig, in 2015, delivered 1.6 million pamphlets criticising Williams to homes across the country and held a press conference.
Williams sought compensatory damages of $400,000 and punitive damages of $90,000 for the remarks against him, and $650,000 in compensatory damages and $130,000 in punitive damages for the leaflets.
Craig’s pamphlets, produced at a personal cost of more than $250,000, were in response to Williams’ claim Craig sexually harassed his former press secretary Rachel MacGregor.
MacGregor had resigned two days before the general election in 2014 and later that year confided in Williams that Craig had sent her unsolicited letters, cards with romantic poetry and compliments about her physical appearance.
After a nearly four-week trial in the High Court at Auckland during 2016, a jury awarded Williams the full amount of his claim.
It was the largest amount awarded in damages for defamation in New Zealand’s legal history.
But the Court of Appeal ruled this year that it was “satisfied that the jury’s award of both compensatory and punitive damages was excessive or wrong, and must be set aside accordingly”.
It suggested an appropriate amount would have been $250,000 for reparations and no more than $10,000 for punitive damages.
Yesterday the Supreme Court granted leave for Williams and Craig to appeal and cross-appeal the Court of Appeal’s decision.
Craig is also waiting for a High Court decision by Justice Kit Toogood following a defamation trial last May between himself and Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater.
Craig and MacGregor, a former TVNZ journalist, were also countersuing each other, both having filed defamation papers in the High Court.
He has also pursued defamation proceedings against former employee Jacqueline Stiekema and former Conservative Party board chairman John Stringer.