{"id":136811,"date":"2025-08-11T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/136811\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:32:11","slug":"dr-munjed-al-muderis-defamation-case-another-court-case-that-should-never-have-been-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/136811\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Munjed Al Muderis defamation case another court case that should never have been heard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lawyers know this and extract settlement payouts using the threat of years of litigation that saps the energy of editors and journalists and their already tight newsroom budgets.<\/p>\n

The Al Muderis case was the second major defamation action to fail in 2025, coming after war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith\u2019s <\/a>misguided appeal to the Federal Court. They followed Bruce Lehrmann\u2019s disastrous loss to Network Ten in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As The Age\u2019s Michael Bachelard points out<\/a>, the result doesn\u2019t matter to the lawyers \u2013 they trouser their fees and move on to the next case, while their disillusioned clients are left to peer into the abyss of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

In the case of Al Muderis, investigative reporter Charlotte Grieve was subjected to six days of cross-examination by Sue Chrysanthou, SC, often described as the country\u2019s pre-eminent defamation lawyer, but whose success rate of late suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n

Chrysanthou egregiously suggested Grieve was unprofessional, unqualified as an investigative journalist and had no understanding of the meaning of truth. It turned out these were apt descriptions of Chrysanthou\u2019s own client.<\/p>\n

When Al Muderis\u2019 world came crumbling down on Friday, it was a fitting end to an action that was always outrageous in its ambition given the weight of evidence against a celebrity surgeon who had long courted the media to build his own brand, but whose gross malpractice left a trail of pain and misery.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s positive that our courts have seen the Al Muderis case and others for what they are: a shot in the dark driven by lawyers who stand to pocket millions.<\/p>\n

If public interest journalism can\u2019t be allowed to hold power to account in a free country, who will? The lawyers?<\/p>\n

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lawyers know this and extract settlement payouts using the threat of years of litigation that saps the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":136812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-136811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115009915847293039","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}