I'm flattered. Honoured. Encouraged. Amused.
As many of you have contacted me this morning about me being named in a writ filed by Dr. Brown, I figured I'd make a quick comment.
On Friday the Premier apparently took out a writ, specifics yet unknown, against myself, the Royal Gazette and Bill Zuill, The Mid Ocean News and Tim Hodgson. Nothing has been served yet, and he has up to 12 months to serve it or drop it.
I'm actually pretty amused that Dr. Brown is so worried about my little website that he wants to try and silence me.
The fact that he dropped the original writ filed strategically to coincide with the Court of Appeals hearing over the Chief Justice's gag order ruling shows that this is all just tactics, posturing and intimidation.
No-one is as yet aware of what the libel complaint is, and when I say no-one I'll include the Premier in that. I don't know what the presumed libel is, and I bet he doesn't either.
This is just the refinement of the strategy to anticipate the Privy Council rejecting the appeal and permitting the publication of the rest of the police documents and try and silence the potential outlets for it.
As one of my legal beagles speculates:
Looking at the RG article this morning, which says that the previous writ was discontinued, it would appear to be just a ploy to shut you up: as they hadn't yet served the writ, they could discontinue it without costs and refile with extra defendants, as it's easier than applying to amend the writ to add defendants. Again, I don't expect anything to come of this. What will happen is that they will apply for an injunction against all of you shortly before the Privy Council delivers its judgment, thereby delaying further dissemination of the BHC even longer. There's no way they'd actually try to sue you all for libel. The BHC documents would have to be put into evidence, which would then allow them to be published verbatim by the press on the basis of qualified privilege.
So thanks for the laugh Mr. Premier. And to my readers, thanks for the support.
Posted by Christian S. Dunleavy