Geoffrey Rush Awarded $2 Million in Defamation Case, a Record for Australia - The New York Times

MELBOURNE, Australia — The Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush will be awarded 2.9 million Australian dollars in his defamation case against Rupert Murdoch’s Nationwide News, a court said on Thursday, the largest such payout to a single person in Australia’s history.

Mr. Rush was awarded 850,000 dollars, or about $600,000, in initial damages in April after winning his defamation case, in which he accused a tabloid newspaper of wrongly portraying him as having behaved inappropriately toward a female co-star.

On Thursday, he was awarded an additional 1.98 million Australian dollars for past and future economic losses and 42,000 dollars in interest. That brought the total award to 2.9 million Australian dollars, or nearly $2 million.

“Geoffrey Rush obviously has won the battle — he is a spectacular winner in the context of litigation,” said Matt Collins, an Australian lawyer who is an expert in defamation law. “But you would query whether he has ultimately won the war. You would query whether any sum of money would be sufficient to restore his reputation.”

Mr. Rush’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou, declined to comment.

The actor’s defamation case involved two front-page articles published in late 2017 by The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney newspaper.

The articles alleged unseemly conduct by Mr. Rush toward an unidentified female actress in a Sydney Theater Company production of “King Lear” from 2015 to 2016. One of the articles was accompanied by a photo of Mr. Rush in costume under the headline “King Leer.” The actress was later revealed to be Eryn Jean Norvill.

In a much-publicized trial, Mr. Rush, 67, a star of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series and other films, argued that the articles incorrectly depicted him as a “pervert” and a “sexual predator.”

Mr. Rush’s lawyer said in court on Thursday that the actor had offered earlier to settle the case, asking Nationwide News to pay him 50,000 dollars as well as cover his legal costs and issue an apology. He also asked for the articles to be removed. Nationwide News declined.

The April verdict was seen as a blow for the #MeToo movement in Australia; advocates say the country’s strict defamation laws have helped keep it from gaining steam. The case was closely watched in part because it was a test of whether a celebrity of Mr. Rush’s stature could fend off #MeToo accusations through a defamation claim.

The record damages awarded on Thursday follow a spate of high-profile defamation cases in Australia.

In 2017, Bauer Media was ordered to pay the Australian actress Rebel Wilson 4.7 million dollars, over a series of magazine articles in 2015 that painted her as a serial liar. That amount was reduced to 600,000 dollars by an appeals court, which found a lack of evidence that she had suffered an economic loss of the magnitude of the original award.

Also in 2017, the police were ordered to pay 2.6 million dollars in damages to a Perth-based lawyer, Lloyd Rayney, after he claimed he had been defamed for being called the “prime” suspect in his wife’s murder.

“We had a flight of very high-profile defamation cases in Australia over the last few years, and the trend has been towards increasing damages awarded,” said Mr. Collins, the defamation law expert.

In Mr. Rush’s case, the amount of the economic losses was agreed to between the parties, rather than imposed by the court. Mr. Rush originally asked for more than 20 million dollars in damages.

Nationwide News is appealing the defamation verdict. If Mr. Rush loses the appeal, Nationwide News will not have to pay any damages.

A cornerstone of the appeal is the evidence of “Witness X,” identified this month as the Australian actress Yael Stone, 34, who is best known for her role in the Netflix show “Orange is the New Black.”

Midway through the trial last year, Nationwide News called on “Witness X” to provide evidence. Justice Michael Wigney, who presided over the case, rejected the bid and ordered Ms. Stone’s identity suppressed.

In an interview published in December, Ms. Stone told The New York Times that Mr. Rush had behaved inappropriately toward her during a 2010-11 Sydney production of “The Diary of a Madman.”

She said that Mr. Rush had danced naked in front of her, sent her erotic text messages and used a mirror to watch her shower.

The actor said in a statement at the time that Ms. Stone’s allegations were “incorrect and in some instances have been taken completely out of context.”

Ms. Norvill, for her part, testified last year that Mr. Rush had sexually harassed her, saying he had made “groping” and “cupping” gestures toward her breasts.

She said he also “deliberately” stroked her breast in front of a theater audience and on a separate occasion traced her lower back along the waistline of her jeans with his fingertips.

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