Steven Joyce wins defamation case against National Business Review

Former politician Steven Joyce. Photo / File

Former politician Steven Joyce has won a defamation case against the National Business Review, having obtained a ruling that the business publication and its owner Todd Scott defamed him.

The former finance minister did not seek damages in the case launched over a 2018 column titled 'Joyce sacking first test of Bridges' leadership.' However, he has won a declaration that NBR defamed Joyce and must now pay Joyce's costs.

Joyce had originally sued the writer of the column, PR man and political commentator Matthew Hooton, but Hooton settled that dispute by paying Joyce's costs at the time of $5,000.

While there will be a further hearing on costs, it is believed that they will be close to $200,000 given the proceeding lasted for more than a year and involved several pre-trial applications. Joyce's solicitors were MinterEllisonRuddWatts and he was represented in court by Zane Kennedy of Mills Lane Chambers.

In August last year the judge had recommended a correction but the company which owns NBR, Fourth Estate Holdings 2012, did not accept its recommendation. In October 2018 Joyce added Scott to the claim, saying his subsequent tweets which claimed the column's "sources were solid" and referenced a dispute with Hooton were defamatory.

In a ruling delivered this afternoon Justice Pheroze Jagose said the column and the tweets were defamatory.

The judge considered the article from the standpoint of a hypothetical NBR reader, relying on the publication's media kit to understand its audience.

"If the NBR's print and website readers reflect the interests of its self-depiction, it may be thought they have a marginally more jaundiced view than the general population of questionable or questioned political activities."

The judge said that a reasonable reader would conclude Joyce was prepared to engage in unethical and otherwise improper behaviour in pursuit of his political objectives. Joyce had alleged these were the meanings of the column saying he had "friends at Chorus" and Hooton's use of the term "blackmail."

The judge said "strikingly" no evidence was led by the defendants to support any of its defences. BusinessDesk understands NBR's former editor Duncan Bridgeman, now at NZ Herald, had been lined up to give his version of events but in the end, he was not called.

Disclosure: BusinessDesk has been threatened with proceedings over a story published in relation to this court case but no formal legal proceedings have been issued.