'Dismissed': legal experts explain the judgment in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case
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2023
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Villegas, R.
Sarre, W.
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Today, Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko handed down his long-awaited judgment in the defamation case that Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living former SAS soldier, brought against the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times. The civil trial ended in July 2022 after an astonishing 110 days of evidence and legal submissions. The case was also interrupted by COVID lockdowns. Besanko determined the newspapers did establish the “substantial truth” of some of the allegations, though not of others. He concluded that in light of these findings, “each proceeding must be dismissed”. In his judgment, the judge said he was satisfied the most serious imputations were proven on the balance of probabilities, which is the test in such civil cases.
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Copyright 2023 the author. This publication is available under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/)