Publication: The Weekender Issued: Date: 2007-01-13 Reporter: Carmel Rickard Reporter:

The Sting in the Roberts Defamation Tale

 

Publication 

The Weekender

Date

2007-01-13

Reporter

 Carmel Rickard

Web Link

www.bday.co.za

 

Court reporters likened the case to a TV soapie, and this week’s judgment in the Ronald Suresh Roberts defamation case provided a climax good enough to satisfy even the most addicted viewers.

Roberts had his just reward: in his decision, acting judge Leslie Weinkove of the Cape Town High Court compiled a list of choice epithets to describe Roberts and his behaviour ­ and the list was far more extensive than could be found even in journalist Chris Barron’s original article.

Roberts, by turn author, lawyer and businessman, went to court claiming that a piece by Barron in the Sunday Times had been defamatory on a number of grounds.

These were eventually narrowed down to two issues and Weinkove dismissed Roberts’s claims on both.

In the process the judge analysed Roberts’s personality as it emerged in correspondence and other documents before the court as well as in cross-examination.

And if Roberts’s lawyers had whinged that Barron’s October 2004 article amounted to “character assassination", it would be interesting to hear how they would characterise the judge’s analysis, for virtually all the criticisms a reader might have found in the Sunday Times piece were confirmed, and often amplified, by the judge.

The first sign that the judgment would go against Roberts came at the start of the decision, when the judge called Roberts a “public figure", “engaged in robust public discord including venomous criticism of other public figures". In this behaviour towards other public figures, the judge said, Roberts had “set a standard which legitimately constitutes an invitation to be used in judging him".

There are, however, serious lessons to be learnt from Weinkove’s devastating defamation judgment, both for litigants and for the media.

Legal experts, who cannot be named for professional reasons, said that the decision illustrated how foolish it may be to sue for defamation. Roberts joined a list of defamation litigants ­ prominent among them Oscar Wilde ­ who insisted on going to court and who came off much the worse for the experience.

Roberts not only lost his case and was publicly humiliated (the judge catalogued his unreasonable, obsessive and threatening behaviour and labelled it as such) ­ he was also made to suffer in his purse. All the costs of the main matter and of a related interdict were awarded against him.

One senior legal practitioner said: “Most advocates will tell you that clients go to their lawyers on the day after the alleged defamation and that they are reluctant to listen to advice of moderation. In fact they are often reluctant to listen to anything at all."

He said that as a result of precipitate action, defamation cases seldom served the purpose for which they were intended ­ to salvage a compromised reputation. In fact, “legal action often backfires, as happened in this case".

There are also lessons for journalists and editors in this judgment. Weinkove did not simply shrug his shoulders and say that Roberts’s behaviour was so bad that the media could have behaved as it liked.

Instead the judge outlined once again the test that the courts would use in matters of defamation and held Barron and the newspaper to this standard, checking that they had acted properly in writing, editing and printing the article.

Roberts may well have fared better in his claim against the Sunday Times if that paper, or Barron, had behaved with less professionalism and care.

In other words, no matter how irrationally a public figure behaves, no matter the threats, name-dropping and bullying, or even if the person appears unbalanced, paranoid and obsessed, the usual standards must be maintained and all the usual safeguards and checks observed.

Roberts’s lawyers said they would study the judgment before deciding on further steps.

With acknowledgements to Business Day Weekender.