Australian Broadcasting Corporation v O'Neill

What happened?

The ABC planned to broadcast a documentary about the disappearance of the Beaumont children, which included allegations that O'Neill — a prisoner convicted of another child murder — was suspected. He sued for defamation and obtained an interlocutory injunction stopping the broadcast.

What did the Court decide?

The injunction was set aside and the ABC was free to broadcast. A majority held that the courts below had given insufficient weight to the public interest in free discussion, and had treated the prospects of the defamation action too favourably in circumstances where the ABC intended to plead truth.

Why does this case matter?

It is cited far more often by defendants than by plaintiffs, and that tells you what it is for. The ABC won: a broadcaster was left free to publish serious allegations about a convicted murderer, before any trial of whether they were true.

The practical consequence is where the argument now has to be spent. A plaintiff cannot dispose of the first limb in a sentence and move on, and a defendant intending to plead truth has a great deal to say at that stage. Expect these applications to be argued in detail about prospects rather than resolved quickly on convenience.

Exam and application relevance

Say how strong the case actually looks, and say what follows from that for the balance. The plaintiff must still show a sufficient likelihood of success — a favourable balance does not rescue a claim that has not reached that threshold, and nothing here abolishes it. Where the application is to restrain a publication said to be defamatory, address the public interest in free discussion explicitly rather than folding it into convenience.

Check your understanding

A defendant who intends to plead truth has not yet proved anything. Why does that nonetheless make an injunction harder for the plaintiff to obtain?