Page 3208 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
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We also felt that our law should be amended to provide that, where a person is defamed but dies prior to the commencement of a defamation action, an action may be commenced on that person's behalf, probably by the estate, within six months of the date of publication. If someone is defamed and two days later is killed in a car crash and that causes great trauma for the relatives - the defamation as much as the death - the estate could bring an action within six months. We also saw a need for the Government to review the procedures for issuing writs and statements of claim.
Court-recommended correction statements are dealt with by the State Attorneys-General. The committee looking at defamation saw that as a good idea. We thought that our law should provide that, where the form and timing of corrections and apologies mitigate a defamation, the plaintiff should be limited to receiving damages for economic loss. That is not the case at present. Indeed, corrections and apologies often merely ensure that an action is going to succeed, with no real difference being made to costs. That should not be the case.
It was interesting that a couple of witnesses who appeared before our committee indicated that they had taken successful defamation actions in the ACT Small Claims Court. That is a rather novel approach.
Ms Follett: Only a small reputation.
MR STEFANIAK: One was a professor, actually. One fellow saw that as a means of getting justice much more expeditiously. He did not want to make a huge profit out of the defamation action and, accordingly, he took an action in the Small Claims Court and was successful. The Small Claims Court, as we heard yesterday from a number of speakers when dealing with an amendment to the Small Claims Act, is there for the ordinary Canberra citizens to take out various civil actions without recourse to lawyers or massive legal expense. Our committee would commend that course to persons who feel that they have been defamed, rather than incurring the massive costs involved in a Supreme Court action.
From my time in private practice I know that many people consider themselves to have been defamed and are worried about it. People defame them in their associations or they are defamed at work. They are not public figures or people in business or leading sports men or women and they do not have reputations that suffer in the same way, because only a limited number of people hear the defamation; nevertheless, it causes them concern. For people who want remedies there, and they have the same rights as persons who are well known nationally, it is very useful to have recourse for defamatory actions to the Small Claims Court, as a couple of people indicated to us.
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