Here is the N.Y. Times article about the defamation lawsuit that I won against Sixty Minutes, the Age, Nick McKenzie, Charlotte Grieve and Joel Tozar. I didn’t just win, it was a total victory. It was likely the most lopsided win in Australian defamation history. The respondents could not even mount a defense, had no evidence to support their false allegations, and were forced to concede defeat and pay me more than the legal maximum for reputational harm allowed under Australian law, plus pay my legal costs on an indemnity basis, which is an extreme remedy reserved for the most egregious conduct. Judgment was entered in my favor against all five respondents. There is no reference to a settlement. During the course of the case, they actually lost seven consecutive judgments in a row, an Australian record. Yet the headline only reads that I received a settlement to end the suit. Nothing about my winning the suit—just that I got paid to end it.
Within the body of the article, it describes the lawsuit as “resolved” and “settled,” but nowhere does it read that I “won” the lawsuit or that any of the respondents “lost.”
This is a deliberate attempt by Matthew Goldstein to cover for his partners in crime. I contacted the N.Y. Times asking them to correct the headline and the article to reflect that I won the lawsuit, and that all that was settled was how much the losers had to pay me, but they refused. They also want to cover for Goldstein, who was clearly complicit in the media’s attempt to frame my bank and destroy its business.
The reason the judge never issued a final opinion to go with the judgment is that Nine offered to pay me more than the legal maximum to end the lawsuit. My lawyers said that if I refused their offer, I risked being liable for Nine’s costs from that point forward, as well as my own costs, which could have been considerable. So I followed the advice of counsel and accepted Nine’s complete surrender. But since Nine exploited my acceptance to claim they didn’t really lose, I regret my decision. The judge would have issued a scathing decision condemning the unethical conduct of the journalist, and it would have been worth the cost to obtain that.