The Talley’s versus Television New Zealand defamation trial has concluded with the South Island food processor claiming it was only seeking to correct the record and its legal action was “not chilling”.
The final day on Wednesday of the long trial, which stretched into five weeks, beyond its scheduled four, saw the High Court at Auckland hear closing arguments for Talley’s Group.
Talley’s asserted that TVNZ and its Christchurch reporter Thomas Mead broadcast six false stories about health and safety conditions at its South Island processing plants between 2021-22.
Brian Dickey KC, acting for Talley’s, pushed back against claims from TVNZ’s lawyer Davey Salmon KC that Talley’s actions – if successful – would gut the responsible journalism defence that protected media outlets doing public interest reporting about wealthy subjects.
“The action brought here is not chilling. It does not have the catastrophic effects which the defendants seek to attach to it,” Dickey said.
“Mainstream media have options. They can retract, correct, apologise, or, as in this case, they can defend.”
“They are not being gagged,” Dickey said, noting TVNZ had “spared no expense” in mounting its defence.
“There is, with respect, absolutely nothing chilling about a corporate plaintiff coming to court to have vindicated its position in defamation,” Dickey said.
Dickey said the company had “come to court because of the serious and false allegations made about them that Television New Zealand and Mr Mead have steadfastly refused to correct the record for four years”.
Dickey said Talley’s had nothing against the responsible journalism defence, which Salmon had earlier told the court had been introduced to protect media outlets from deep-pocketed subjects engaging in lawfare.
“The plaintiffs don’t dispute the public good to be found in the defence when applied appropriately to publications which legitimately deserve its protection. But the case for the plaintiffs is that it hasn’t been appropriately applied here,” Dickey said.
William Potter, also acting for Talley’s, ran the court through what he considered contentious language used in Mead’s stories by him and his sources saying “exclusive investigation”, “pulling back the curtain,” “asking the hard questions”, “kick in the guts” and “knife in the back” painted his clients in an unnecessarily negative light.
Talley’s is suing as a corporate entity, not as individual directors or shareholders, requiring the company to prove financial losses from the stories for their case to succeed.
TVNZ has spent much of its defence arguing that this loss hasn’t been proven.
But Potter argued this was a low bar to hurdle: “Self-evidently, companies have reputations. They may not suffer hurt feelings, but they have a reputation.”
In written submissions, Talley’s particularly criticised one of Mead’s stories that claimed staff at an Ashburton food processing plant were working with machines that had an insufficient number of emergency stop buttons.
Mead had broadcast anonymous sources claiming they were only aware of “10-15″ such buttons, but the court has heard various claims from Talley’s witnesses that the number was far higher.
Talley’s submissions noted one of Mead’s sources to verify his claim later told the court he thought the “10-15″ claim was just a “figure of speech” and that he thought Mead should “actually investigate the exact number”.
Dickey characterised TVNZ editorial oversight as being based on “blind trust”.
“Mead misconstrued the quotes of his sources; failed to adequately test their claims and reliability; provided the plaintiffs with insufficient time to fairly comment on the damaging allegations raised against them; failed to adequately engage with material supporting the plaintiffs’ view; and published defamatory material going beyond what was necessary to communicate on the matter of public interest,” Dickey wrote.
Dickey also attacked Mead’s broadcasting of claims made by anonymous sources more broadly, with Talley’s having previously gone to the High Court in a failed bid to unmask them.
“There’s a significant point on the use of anonymous sources, which is that if you can’t verify them to the degree necessary, you don’t have to use them,” Dickey said.
At the conclusion of the trial on Wednesday, Justice Pheroze Jagose told the court he had found the subject material an enjoyable throw-back to his earlier career in litigation: “A great deal of this is areas which I’m very familiar with. So all of that’s been fun compared to my usual diet.”
“Thank you for what’s been a very interesting month,” he said.
Justice Jagose this week declined to rule on a request from the Herald filed last month for access to briefs on evidence in the case, including many taken as read and not heard in open court, and said “the court is not a lending library”.
Justice Jagose left it to counsel to facilitate access to documents and said he appreciated this arrangement because “the less I have to do, the better, frankly”.
TVNZ provided the requested evidence to the Herald on Tuesday, the day of Justice Jagose’s discussion of the request. By the end of trial on Wednesday and at the time of this publication, Talley’s had only provided a copy of its closing submissions.
The judge reserved his decision, noting while he hoped to deliver a ruling on the case before the end of the year, the extension of the trial into a fifth week might see this pushed out beyond Easter 2026.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism – including twice being named Reporter of the Year – and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.