VIEW CASE

This was an appeal from a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria concerning articles that appeared in the Australian Newspaper (owned by the Respondent) regarding Phoenix, a registered training organisation owned by Australian Careers Network (ACN).  The article described the Applicant, Mr Charan as a director of ACN, which was incorrect, though he had been involved as managing director of ACN’s predecessor, CTI.  The trial judge found that a number of imputations were contained in the article including that the Applicant managed vocational training organisations which were non-compliant and engaged in unscrupulous business practices, however he found that Respondent had shown they were substantially true and thus they made out a defence under s 25 of the Defamation Act 2008 (Vic) and at common law.   The Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the appeal, holding that the trial judge was correct to characterise the imputations as he did, including permissible variants of the imputations.

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