I appeared for the Plaintiff in Carter v Napper [2022] WADC 25. The decision is here.
Judge Prior of the District Court of Western Australia held that 4 matters published by the Defendant were defamatory of the Plaintiff.
His Honour found that the Plaintiff was entitled to an award of damages in the amount of $30,000 and an additional $10,000 for aggravated damages.
The Court also granted the Plaintiff’s application for a final injunction and awarded indemnity costs to the Plaintiff.
My client was the owner of a cleaning business who worked in an apartment building. The Defendant was a tenant who asserted the owner was not doing his job, was a danger to children and a paedophile. My client and his husband lived in the apartment building as well as running the cleaning and gardening business which cleaned the building. The also ran a clothing business.
The tenant, Mr Napper, lived opposite the couple.
He asserted in an email to the strata manager that my clients ran photoshoots in the building, inappropriately rented out their property, and that the age difference between Mr Carter and his husband suggested that he was a paedophile and unsafe to be around children.
Injunctions restraining Mr Napper were also made.
The case highlights the approach the Court will take where the Defendant’s conduct exacerbates the Plaintiff’s hurt following a defamatory publication and where further conduct is unreasonable in the context of settling the resulting dispute.
For these reasons, the Court agreed with my submissions that aggravated damages and indemnity costs should be awarded to the Plaintiff.