{"id":212948,"date":"2025-09-09T13:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/212948\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T13:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:50:09","slug":"kerry-stokes-ordered-to-pay-ben-roberts-smiths-13-5m-legal-costs-after-failed-defamation-suit-australia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/212948\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerry Stokes ordered to pay Ben Roberts-Smith\u2019s $13.5m legal costs after failed defamation suit | Australia news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven West Media\u2019s chair, Kerry Stokes, has been ordered to pay $13.5m in legal costs to companies who were unsuccessfully sued for defamation by disgraced former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a federal court registrar ordered that Australian Capital Equity Pty Ltd (ACE), Stokes\u2019 private company, pay costs fixed at almost $13.3m, and a further $225,000 in relation to the costs assessment, bringing the total bill to $13.5m.<\/p>\n

In June 2023, Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, failed in his defamation case against The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times.<\/p>\n

He alleged reports from 2018 defamed him as a war criminal. Justice Anthony Besanko found the newspapers successfully proved \u2013 to the civil standard of the balance of probabilities \u2013 that Roberts-Smith was complicit in the murder of four unarmed civilians while serving in the SAS in Afghanistan, as well as bullying and threatening colleagues, and intimidating a woman with whom he was having an affair.<\/p>\n

The court order regarding the legal costs came five days after the high court ruled it would not hear an appeal <\/a>by Roberts-Smith, and the federal court ruled Stokes would have to pay the media companies legal costs.<\/p>\n

The former special forces soldier had appealed a decision by the full bench of the federal court in May<\/a> to uphold Besanko\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n

The total costs of the proceedings had been estimated at between $30m and $40m.<\/p>\n

Roberts-Smith has consistently denied all wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Roberts-Smith was appointed general manager of Seven Queensland, a role he resigned from after the verdict was handed down in his defamation case.<\/p>\n

The ex-soldier had stood aside from his job in 2021 to focus on the trial.<\/p>\n

Stokes backed Roberts-Smith financially and publicly, insisting his employee was innocent.<\/p>\n

At Seven West Media\u2019s annual general meeting in 2022, Stokes said: \u201cBen Roberts-Smith is innocent and deserves legal representation and that scumbag journalists should be held to account. And quote me on that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven West Media\u2019s chair, Kerry Stokes, has been ordered to pay $13.5m in legal costs to companies who…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":212949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-212948","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\/115174665397841027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212948","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=212948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}