Court of Appeal finds NBR did not defame Steven Joyce

Former Finance Minister Steven Joyce. Photo / John Stone

NBR's publisher has successfully appealed a High Court decision that it defamed former Finance Minister Steven Joyce.

Joyce had been awarded $269,000 in solicitor and client costs after successfully suing Fourth Estate Holdings (2012) Limited and its owner Todd Scott for defamation.

The former National MP did not seek damages in the proceeding, launched over a 2018 column titled "Joyce sacking first test of Bridges' leadership".

Joyce had originally sued the writer of the column, political commentator Matthew Hooton, but Hooton settled the dispute by paying Joyce's costs at the time of $5000.

Joyce continued the claim against Fourth Estate. He subsequently added Scott as a defendant, alleging that three tweets published by him had the effect of republishing the article and the defamatory statements in it.

Fourth Estate and Scott challenged the High Court decision in the Court of Appeal in Wellington in September.

In a judgment released today Justices Forrie Miller, David Goddard and Brendan Brown allowed the appeal and set aside the High Court judgment. They said the meaning of the passages of the article at the centre of the case were not in fact defamatory.

The column was highly critical of Joyce's time as a Government minister.

"The first passage, read in context, conveyed neither the pleaded meanings nor the meanings adopted by the judge," the Court of Appeal judges said.

That passage referred to Joyce trying to "introduce the so-called copper tax to subsidise his friends at Chorus".

"A reasonable reader would not understand this passage as alleging that Mr Joyce had personal connections with Chorus and that in pursuing a "copper tax" he was engaging in unethical behaviour of some kind," the Court of Appeal judges said.

"The words 'his friends', if they meant anything at all, were simply an embellishment of the article's aggressive attack on Mr Joyce's political legacy."

They noted that Hooton had a reputation for being provocative.

The court ordered Joyce to pay Fourth Estate Holdings Ltd and Scott's legal costs.