Cherry tree festival organisers caused own ‘reputational damage’, claims Stuff lawyer

Paul Oulton and Anne Cao outside the High Court at Hamilton where they are taking a claim against Stuff for defamation. Photo / Natalie Akoorie

The last-minute cancellation of a cherry blossom festival was the fault of the council and the public backlash including a death threat was caused by media reports of the situation, one of the organisers has claimed.

But the lawyer defending Stuff against Anne Cao and Paul Oulton’s defamation claim says the couple’s failure to secure resource consent in time, their decision to cancel the entire event, messaging to the public that ticket holders would be partly refunded, and their decision to go into liquidation were the reasons for the social media backlash and “reputational damage”, and not Stuff’s articles.

The couple claims Stuff and its former journalist Gary Farrow defamed them with coverage of the September 2019 event’s cancellation, including making them appear as lawbreakers who were disorganised, incompetent, dishonest and fraudulent.

A jury in the High Court at Hamilton heard this week the couple were warned weeks in advance by Waikato District Council they would likely need to publicly notify a resource consent application to hold the 10-day event, expected to attract 12,000 people.

That would mean allowing four weeks for public submissions. Despite being in danger of running out of time, Cao and Oulton continued to sell tickets for the Waikato Cherry Tree Festival up until two days before the event was due to open on September 20, though the festival could still run in a reduced form under the council’s temporary event provision.

They needed resource consent because without it only 1000 people per day could attend under that temporary provision, which was how it operated over three days in 2017 and 2018.

Stuff says it was not its articles that caused reputational damage to Anne Cao and Paul Oulton but their own actions. Photo / Dean Purcell

Following the overwhelming success of the festival in 2018, when up to 6000 people attended - double what should have - the couple received a warning from the council that future breaches could incur penalties.

They applied for resource consent in late July 2019, and employed various consultants to undertake traffic management plans and event organisation to secure the consent.

But the court heard the application lacked specific details the council needed to approve the resource consent including on traffic impacts, parking, and portable toilets and it repeatedly asked the couple, through Cao’s company NZ Pure Tours, for answers.

At the same time, 23 neighbours objected to the festival in a petition as the couple sought resource consent without public notification.

The weekend before the festival, Farrow interviewed Oulton and asked what would happen if resource consent was not achieved.

Anne Cao and husband Paul Oulton. The organisers of the Cherry Tree Festival claim Stuff defamed them when the event was cancelled in 2019. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer

Under cross-examination by Stuff lawyer Robert Stewart, Oulton said he did not tell Farrow about the couple’s “plan B” to downscale the event to eight days, run in three blocks, to comply with the temporary event provisions because he “sensed” Farrow was going to write a negative article.

However, Farrow was told five days later on September 19 in an interview of that backup plan if the resource consent was not approved.

The next morning Oulton wrote to then-Waikato mayor Allan Sanson suggesting how the council should respond to media enquiries from Farrow on the situation.

On September 19 the council sent Cao and Oulton an abatement notice warning of the penalties if too many people attended, prompting them to cancel the event entirely because it would be “too hard to manage”.

Later that day NZ Pure Tours posted on Facebook it was denied resource consent, the festival was cancelled and ticket holders would be partly refunded. Tickets cost $19 for adults and $10 for children.

In his opening address for the defence, Stewart said Stuff and Farrow believed Cao and Oulton were blaming them for reputational damage that resulted from the plaintiffs’ own actions.

Stewart said there were four reasons why Stuff and Farrow believed the six articles in question did not cause them damage.

These were that resource consent was not obtained, despite the couple first getting information from the council in January, because the entire event was cancelled and this happened at the 11th hour, the messaging on Facebook about partial refunds, and that the company was placed in liquidation.

Stewart said ticket holders were understandably “annoyed, confused and angry” and that although the couple eventually borrowed money to repay ticket holders, “the damage was already done”.

Waikato Times chief news director Wayne Timmo took the stand Friday afternoon and the trial is expected to resume on Monday.

Natalie Akoorie is the Open Justice deputy editor, based in Waikato and covering crime and justice nationally. Natalie first joined the Herald in 2011 and has been a journalist in New Zealand and overseas for 28 years, recently covering health, social issues, local government, and the regions.