The stakes for disgraced celebrity surgeon Munjed Al Muderis heading into his appeal next week of the loss of his marathon defamation case against Nine, owner of this masthead, were already high. And that’s before considering the costs associated with the matter.
About six weeks ago, the stakes rose further. In a judgment published on April 23, Justice Wendy Abraham ordered Al Muderis to pay Nine’s costs for the defamation suit, assessed on an indemnity basis from the start of the hearing, payable on a lump sum basis. Al Muderis could also have to stump up for Nine’s costs application.
But Al Muderis successfully applied to have the indemnity costs decision paused until the defamation appeal is decided. His lawyer, Nicholas Pullen, told CBD the indemnity costs order is also the subject of an application to appeal.
That’s not all of it, though. Just this week, Abraham ordered Al Muderis to partially pay for the costs of a witness, Mitch Grant.
In the June 2 judgment, the court ordered Al Muderis cover the costs of and incidental to the preparation of evidence and submissions between December 18, 2023, and February 2, 2024, after Al Muderis’ legal team successfully got the court to issue a subpoena for the production of documents.
The same judgment also ordered Al Muderis to pay half of Grant’s costs for a March 7 hearing, along with those related to the current application, and the witness’s reasonable costs or expenses of complying with the subpoena.
“As you are no doubt aware the appeal hearing for the final judgement [sic] that underpins the [two] judgements [sic] you refer to begins next week,” Pullen told CBD in response to a request for comment on Wednesday.
“I also note … the 23 April judgement [sic] where the application by Dr Al Muderis to stay the indemnity costs order until further order, was successful. Further, the indemnity costs judgement [sic] is currently subject to an application for leave to appeal, and [Tuesday’s] Grant judgement [sic] is still being reviewed.”
The appeal is set to kick off in the Federal Court on June 9. It comes after Al Muderis lost his defamation case against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes last year over a series of reports published in late 2022 alleging he had performed negligent surgery.
As this masthead reported at the time, Abraham found Nine had established both contextual truth and public interest defences.
No doubt we aren’t the only ones looking forward to round two.
Senators flight snafu after aviation hearing
We couldn’t have written this one better ourselves: Two senators probing the aviation sector during a Friday hearing on the government’s planned aviation consumer protections had their flights delayed or cancelled en route home.
Enter senators Richard Colbeck and Ross Cadell. Colbeck, a Liberal senator for Tasmania, had planned to fly Qantas home on Friday evening, only for his flight to be cancelled. He then booked an alternative flight with another airline, which took him to his home state (but not his home port).
“The core of the issue though is not about my individual circumstance – members and senators get looked after pretty well – it is about customers more generally getting what they expected when they bought a ticket, and then how the airlines manage the situation when things, as they do, go pear-shaped,” Colbeck told CBD on Tuesday.
“I am fortunate in that I could make other arrangements, where others I know weren’t able to attend events they had planned to go to because of the cancellation.”
For Cadell, things weren’t quite as bad, but still landed with an amusing twist of irony. The Nationals senator for NSW was planning to use the regional carrier Link Airways to fly home after the hearing, but got hamstrung by a weather-induced delay. Cadell insisted it wasn’t the fault of the airline.
But even if it was the airline’s fault, Cadell had no alternative route home. When asked about what other arrangements he might’ve made: “Waited, no alternative existed,” the senator’s office told CBD in response.
All this as representatives of Qantas, Jetstar, and Virgin Australia fronted the Senate hearing into Australia’s proposed aviation consumer protection laws, which Qantas and Virgin have criticised for taking a one-size-fits-all approach to regulating the airlines.
But not before Cadell, for the record, was sure to disclose that he’s a member of both Qantas’ Chairman’s Lounge and Virgin’s Beyond Lounge, which was followed by a chorus of “so am I”.
Regular readers will recall our amusement at even the faintest whiff of pushback from the sector to Australia’s new consumer rights. That was in April, after Virgin Australia’s corporate affairs boss, Christian Bennett, went on a LinkedIn rant bemoaning the cancellation of an Airbnb booking he’d made for a trip to the United States. The post called for hosts on the platform who cancel to be “penalised”.
John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.