YOU CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC…

…not when Truth is waiting in the wings…         James Plumridge

Beware, bloggers, retribution may be at hand in the form of a Supreme Court writ.

A person I dare not name but will gingerly refer to as El Supremo has said that people who make personal comments on the blog will be held accountable under the law of defamation.  In other words, they will be sued.

Most of the people who contribute to the blog do so anonymously.  I find that regrettable.  I wish more contributors would have the courage to identify themselves, and that some of the people who contribute anonymously would take a little more care to avoid sounding like trolls.

Don’t forget, we are the good people.  We wear the white hats.

It's very hard to sue a person who writes anonymously on the Internet.  If it were easier, the courts would be clogged for decades.

It would be difficult to sue the publisher of this blog, because nobody seems to have the faintest idea who he is, and the only physical address he has given us belongs to a former, fondly remembered, Shire of York CEO.  (I’d love to think he is the mysterious blogmaster, but on balance I’m sure he isn’t.)

That leaves only the handful of brazen fools brave enough to subscribe their names to what they write.

On this blog, the most prolific of those fools are David Taylor and myself.  Of the pair of us, I would say that I am the more restrained, but both of us could easily be in the firing line for legal action, depending on what the august personage whose name I tremble to speak, or his bureaucratic friends, would count as a personal comment.

I don’t know David, and won’t presume to speak for him.  For my part, let me say that I don’t regard threats of litigation lightly.  Most of us are defamed at some time in our lives, but only the wealthy, the powerful and the publicly funded can afford the luxury of dragging their critics into court for saying rude things about them.  The rest of us must simply take our lumps.

As is so often the case, the scales of justice are tipped in favour of those who can afford to pay for it, or can prevail on the taxpayer or ratepayer to meet the cost.

All the same, I consider such threats cowardly and ridiculous, especially when they are made by or for people who occupy or aspire to high office, or choose to live in the public eye.  For those people, being the butt of jokes or unkind remarks goes, as they say, with the territory.  But it’s only too easy to forget, as I may have done, how pompous and self-important such individuals can be.

People in those positions have usually enjoyed the benefits of a good, often tertiary education and are perfectly capable of responding personally to whatever nasty things may have been said to expose them, in the common law phrase, to ‘hatred, ridicule or contempt’.  (I’m not keen on hatred or contempt, to be honest, but ridicule is another matter; it’s the atom bomb of the disadvantaged.)

Alternatively, if they lack the confidence to speak for themselves, the privileged can hire a personal ‘bugle’ in the shape of a PR firm or ‘spin doctor’—a lot cheaper than a firm of lawyers.

If ‘important’ folk who believe their reputations have been traduced, or just want to silence their critics, scurry off to the Supreme Court, this may have the effect of shutting down until trial all further discussion of whatever it was that might have brought public odium upon them.  For that reason, defamation writs used to be known as ‘stop writs’ and for all I know may still be. 

I think I’m right in saying most defamation actions don’t go to trial.  They are usually settled out of court, and the wicked defamer silenced further, or permanently, by a confidentiality agreement.

Until a few years ago, each state had its own law of defamation.  Apparently WA was once the only state in which defendants could get themselves off the legal hook by proving on the balance of probabilities that what they had said or written was true. I believe that is now the case throughout Australia. 

Another defence is to show that what you said that gave offence, even if it turned out to be wrong, was the expression of an honest opinion, inferred from stated facts, on a matter of public interest.

I await with trepidation the fall of the executioner’s axe.  Meanwhile, I promise I shall ask the blogmaster to post in these pages any lawyers’ letters or court documents I have the misfortune to receive.

And if I am to be sued, which great heaven forfend, I remind the Dark Side that there exists a process called discovery of documents that is a lot quicker and in the long run more comprehensive than what can be done via FOI.  No crafty redactions allowed, unless there are national security issues at stake, which as I always say seems highly unlikely in matters pertaining to the Shire of York.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal bread.  ANATOLE FRANCE

When you got nuthin’, you got nuthin’ to lose.  BOB DYLAN