AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-1999
FED: Publisher to continue Abbott, Costello appeal
CANBERRA, Aug 31 AAP - Publisher Random House will today continue its attempt to have a
massive damages payout to Howard government ministers Peter Costello and Tony Abbott quashed.
Lawyer Bruce McClintock, QC, yesterday conceded that comments in the book Goodbye Jerusalem
were vulgar, offensive and untrue and part of a random stream of thought from the "fevered
brain" of writer Bob Ellis.
But he denied that the claim the wife of one of the men had sex with both before her
marriage and changed their political views was defamatory.
He told the Federal Court the community saw nothing morally wrong with premarital sex or
changing one's political allegiance.
Justice Terence Higgins last year awarded a total of $277,500 in damages to the two
ministers and their wives after finding the book defamed them.
But Mr McClintock said Justice Higgins should not have found any defamatory imputations in
the Ellis book because the ordinary reasonable reader of the 1990s would not regard such
allegations as being defamatory.
The appeal is expected to conclude today.
AAP ss/cjh
KEYWORD: ABBOTT DAYLEAD
1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.
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