Craig wins his defamation bout with Stringer
Fallout from the Conservative Party’s “implosion” five years ago has continued with yet another High Court ruling on a defamation case involving former leader Colin Craig.
However, this time, the multimillionaire has come away with a victory in his bout with the party’s ex-board member John Stringer.
In 2015, Stringer made several public allegations against Craig, including that the property developer had sexually harassed his press secretary, Rachel MacGregor.
Craig responded by holding a press conference with his wife, Helen, and published a booklet titled Dirty Politics and Hidden Agendas.
The booklet was distributed to 1.6 million Kiwi households.
In the pamphlets — which cost Craig more than $250,000 — a socalled trio of “schemers” were targeted, whom Craig believed had plotted against him.
The three men were Stringer, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union founder Jordan Williams and former Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater.
Craig has been involved in defamation proceedings with them all, largely over the same allegations.
Stringer, however, claimed he was defamed by the Craigs.
He also said three others defamed him: Stephen Taylor, who anonymously moderated the booklet, and Conservative Party officials Angela Storr and Kevin Stitt, who emailed updates to party members about Stringer and legal proceedings.
All six went to trial in August and September last year.
If successful, Stringer sought declarations, damages, aggravating damages and seemingly punitive damages against the defendants, amounting to more than $3.5 million.
Justice Matthew Palmer has this month released his judgment.
He said the Craigs and other defendants fairly characterise their statements as falling broadly into six categories regarding Stringer: that he lied or is a liar, engaged in attack politics, co-ordinated with others to target Craig, seriously breached the Conservative Party’s rules, acted unlawfully by defaming Craig, and betrayed others.
Although the statements were published and most, Justice Palmer said, were defamatory of Stringer, he ruled the Craigs had qualified privilege. Justice Palmer said the couple’s defamatory statements of opinion were also “their genuine opinions” and based on facts or were not materially different from the truth.
Justice Palmer had earlier dismissed Craig’s efforts to counter-sue Stringer, which included a bid to question MacGregor on the witness stand for the fourth time.
Craig’s defamation trials against Williams and Slater have concluded but were the subject of appeals.
The Supreme Court ordered a retrial in the case between Craig and Williams after a four-week trial in 2016. The jury had found in Williams’ favour and awarded him $1.27m — the highest amount for defamation damages in New Zealand’s history.
But in December Williams admitted making false allegations and apologised to Craig and his family, while also making an undisclosed payment — ending legal proceedings.
The Craig and Slater case, meanwhile, is now awaiting a Court of Appeal ruling after Justice Kit Toogood decided the ex-blogger defamed the former politician but declined to award damages.
Justice Toogood also ruled for the first time that Craig had sexually harassed MacGregor “on multiple occasions from early 2012 to 2014”.
In 2018, Craig and MacGregor also counter-sued each other with Justice Anne Hinton again finding Craig sexually harassed his former press secretary. The judge said the pair had defamed each other. Craig, who withdrew his claim for damages, plans to appeal the decision.
A confidential settlement between Craig and MacGregor had been reached in 2015 but Craig was later ordered to pay MacGregor more than $120,000 by the Human Rights Review Tribunal after it ruled he breached the agreement in media interviews.