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Luke Sayers has told a court he genuinely and reasonably believed there were grounds to suspect that his estranged wife Cate Sayers posted a photo of his penis on X in January last year before telling him, “Let’s see how you get out of this one”.
Luke Sayers, the former PwC chief executive and Carlton Football Club president, alleges in a defence to a defamation action launched by Cate Sayers, that he and his wife were the only people with knowledge of a “medical photograph” of his penis before it was posted online for 13 minutes.
In documents filed with the Victorian Supreme Court this week, Sayers alleges that a day after the lewd photo was published online in a post tagging a female manager at Carlton sponsor Bupa, Cate Sayers “said to Luke words to the following effect: ‘Let’s see how you get out of this one’.”
According to the court documents, Cate Sayers was the only person with unique knowledge of both the photograph and Luke Sayers’ connection with the Bupa executive, who he socialised with and entertained over lunch as part of the club’s commercial relationship with the health insurer.
“At all relevant times Luke genuinely and reasonably believed that there were grounds to suspect that Cate published the medical photograph via the X post without Luke’s knowledge or permission; and Cate’s denials about posting the medical photograph cannot be trusted,” Sayers submitted in additional documents attached to his defence and seen by this masthead.
Luke Sayers is using the accusations against his wife to provide further context around a statutory declaration he made to the AFL while it was investigating the lewd photo scandal, the contents of which form the basis for Cate Sayers’ legal claims. Luke’s accusations are also being relied on to bolster his defence against her defamation claim, and mitigate any damages awarded to her if she wins the case.
Sayers claims he left his phone in a hotel bedroom in Italy while taking a shower when the photo was posted. The family had been holidaying in Italy at the time, although according to earlier reports in The Herald Sun, Cate Sayers had been staying in a separate hotel outside Milan, more than 250 kilometres from where Luke and the couple’s daughters were skiing in the Dolomites when the photograph was posted.
Cate Sayers launched legal action against her husband in January, claiming that he defamed her and breached her confidence in a statutory declaration provided to the AFL during its investigation of the lewd photo scandal.
Her statement of claim alleged that Sayers disclosed information about her private life, including her sexual history and medical information, in his statutory declaration to the AFL.
Cate Sayers claims she was defamed by her estranged husband’s statement because it implied: “Cate suffers from mental illness and has been prescribed medication by her doctors which she periodically refuses to take, such that her denials about posting the explicit photo from Mr Sayers’ X account cannot be trusted”.
“The information was used to present her as unstable, untrustworthy, erratic, mentally disturbed and/or presenting as a live risk to her own safety,” her statement of claim alleged.
In his primary defence, Luke Sayers accused his wife of taking confidential documents from his mobile phone, including a privileged draft of his statutory declaration to the AFL, last year, before commencing legal proceedings. He said that the statutory declaration, key to Cate’s lawsuit, was made to protect his reputation after the lewd photo scandal, and shield his family from further emotional distress and anguish. He said that he declared in the statutory declaration that the information provided was true and correct.
He also claims that his estranged wife’s allegations that he breached her privacy by disclosing confidential information are “vague, embarrassing and liable to be struck out”.
Luke Sayers’ team have not pleaded a truth defence but are instead arguing that even if the contents of the statutory declaration are defamatory of Cate, they are protected by a qualified privilege defence because it was made “in the performance of a legal, social, professional or moral duty”.
“Luke published the statutory declaration to protect an interest in response to an attack on his character and conduct; and the contents of the statutory declaration were commensurate with the attack,” he alleged in the documents.
Cate Sayers’ team is set to challenge that defence by arguing that the material in the statutory declaration was motivated by malice at a directions hearing scheduled on Friday.
Luke Sayers was cleared of any wrongdoing by the AFL but later stepped down as Carlton president. His eponymous consulting firm, Sayers Group, was rebranded as Tenet Advisory. He remains an executive director, despite reducing his shareholding to just 1.3 per cent last year.
Representatives for Luke and Cate Sayers were approached for comment.
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Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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