...Author Wins

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30630, 22 December 1964, Page 10

...Author Wins

(K.Z. Press Association —Co

Jopyriffht)

HOBART, Dec. 20.

An Australian author, Hal Porter, of Garvoc, 143 miles south-west of Melbourne, was awarded £lOOO damages in a Supreme Court judgment delivered at Hobart on Friday. Porter sought damages from the Mercury Newspaper Pty., Ltd., arising from a review of his autobiography “The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony,” published on November 7, 1963. After the judgment counsel for the newspaper (Mr B. M. Wicks) declined to comment on the possibility of an appeal. Porter claimed that the review was seriously defamatory of him in the way of his profession as a writer. Mr Justice Neasey found in his judgment that Porter’s I position and status in his profession was substantial and that the nature of the imputations made against him as

a writer were gravely defamatory. His Honour said it seemed to him that it was most disparaging of a serious author in a way of his profession to impute that he had deliberately introduced into his book words and expressions which connoted obscenity to the average reader (which he took the phrase “Anglo-Saxon words” to mean) and did so “not with any concept of literary necessity in mind” but to get his book banned if possible or at least to attract notoriety to it and thus increase its sales.

If the imputations had been made on the basis of the contents of the book alone the newspaper might not have been liable, his Honour said. But the basis on which the imputations were in fact made was unjustifiable. The degree of dissemination of the libel was that it was published in a newspaper with an approximate daily circulation at the time of 51,100, of which about 490 copies would be sent out of Tasmania. Mr Justice Neasey said he doubted whether a reasonable person reading the review would have any clear image of what its writer meant by “the wailings of a lost soul.” He said he thought the most likely thing was that the reader would simply take it as a rather vague expression in the context used for literary effect and intended to refer to a person in dire misery. That part of the published statement he found was not defamatory. His Honour found that virtually the whole of the publication on the face of it consisted of comment which appeared to be inferred from unstated material together with the inference that the comment was borne out by the contents of the book. It was clear, the judgment said, that the essential basis for any defence of fair comment was absent.