Shuaiqi/CLSum huggingface dataset:
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 8 September 2021 FAIRFAX MEDIA PUBLICATIONS PTY LTD v DYLAN VOLLER NATIONWIDE NEWS PTY LIMITED v DYLAN VOLLER AUSTRALIAN NEWS CHANNEL PTY LTD v DYLAN VOLLER [2021] HCA 27 Today, the High Court dismissed appeals from a judgment of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales concerning whether, by posting content relating to news stories about Mr Voller, the respondent, on their respective public Facebook pages, the appellants were liable for the publication of allegedly defamatory "comments" that were posted by third-party Facebook users in response to the content. The appellants are media companies which publish newspapers that circulate in New South Wales or operate television stations, or both. Each appellant maintained a public Facebook page on which they posted content relating to news stories and provided hyperlinks to those stories on their website. After posting content relating to particular news stories referring to Mr Voller, including posts concerning his incarceration in a juvenile justice detention centre in the Northern Territory, a number of third-party Facebook users responded with comments that were alleged to be defamatory of Mr Voller. Mr Voller brought proceedings against the appellants alleging that they were liable for defamation as the publishers of those comments. The primary judge ordered that a question concerning the issue of publication, as agreed by the parties, be decided separately from the balance of the proceedings. The question was whether Mr Voller had "established the publication element of the cause of action of defamation against the defendant[s] in respect of each of the Facebook comments by third-party users". The Court of Appeal concluded that the primary judge did not err in answering that question in the affirmative. The High Court by majority dismissed the appeals and found that the appellants were the publishers of the third-party Facebook user comments. A majority of the Court held that the liability of a person as a publisher depends upon whether that person, by facilitating and encouraging the relevant communication, "participated" in the communication of the defamatory matter to a third person. The majority rejected the appellants' argument that for a person to be a publisher they must know of the relevant defamatory matter and intend to convey it. Each appellant, by the creation of a public Facebook page and the posting of content on that page, facilitated, encouraged and thereby assisted the publication of comments from third-party Facebook users. The appellants were therefore publishers of the third-party comments.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 27 April 2007 GEOFFREY JAMES BENNETT, JOHN EDGAR CHRISTIAN, BRUCE STANLEY WALKER, ANN MITCHELL WALKER, RICHARD AARON KLEINER AND ADMINISTRATION OF NORFOLK ISLAND v COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA The High Court of Australia today dismissed a challenge to the validity of Commonwealth legislation requiring voters and candidates in Norfolk Island elections to be Australian citizens. Norfolk Island became a territory of the Commonwealth in 1914 when it was placed under the authority of and accepted by the Commonwealth in accordance with section 122 of the Constitution. Norfolk Island has since been governed pursuant to a series of Commonwealth Acts. The Norfolk Island Act 1979 granted self-government and established the Legislative Assembly of Norfolk Island. The Norfolk Island Amendment Act 2004 amended the Norfolk Island Act to make Australian citizenship a necessary qualification for voting for, and standing for election to, the Legislative Assembly. Norfolk Island was occupied as a British penal settlement from 1788 to 1814 and from 1825 to 1855. When the second penal settlement was abandoned, the Imperial authorities set aside Norfolk Island for occupation by the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island, which lies between New Zealand and Chile. Pitcairn Island was settled in 1790 by mutineers from the Bounty and some Polynesian men and women. The 200 or so inhabitants of Pitcairn arrived on Norfolk Island in June 1856. From 1856 to 1914 Norfolk Island was administered by the Governor of New South Wales, although until 1897 the Governor administered Norfolk Island in his capacity as Governor of Norfolk Island. New South Wales took over the financial management of the island from 1897 to 1914. Since 1914, the Commonwealth has been responsible for financing the administration and the development and maintenance of infrastructure on Norfolk Island. The 2001 census recorded that Norfolk Island had a permanent population of 1574, of whom 82.5 per cent were Australian citizens and 14.1 per cent were New Zealand citizens, and that 48 per cent were descended from the Pitcairn Islanders. The Court held unanimously that the Norfolk Island Amendment Act was a valid exercise of the Commonwealth Parliament's power to make laws “for the government of any territory” under section 122 of the Constitution. The Court rejected the plaintiffs' contention that in providing for self-government of the island, Parliament was obliged to provide for a particular type of democratic representation that did not discriminate on the basis of Australian citizenship. Nothing in section 122 or elsewhere in the Constitution prohibited Parliament from granting electoral rights on the basis of Australian citizenship.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 12 October 2022 BHP GROUP LIMITED v IMPIOMBATO & ANOR [2022] HCA 33 Today, the High Court dismissed an appeal from a judgment of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The sole issue in the appeal was a question of statutory construction: does Pt IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) permit representative proceedings to be brought on behalf of group members who are not resident in Australia? The appellant, BHP Group Limited ("BHP"), is the respondent in a representative proceeding (also known as a class action) commenced in the Federal Court of Australia under Pt IVA, relating to the failure of the Fundão Dam in Brazil in 2015. The group members in the representative proceeding are persons who, during a specified period before the Dam failure, contracted to acquire an interest in fully paid-up ordinary shares in BHP on the Australian Stock Exchange, BHP Billiton Plc ("BHP Plc") on the London Stock Exchange, and/or BHP Plc on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and who are alleged to have suffered loss by reason of BHP's conduct in contravention of the continuous disclosure obligations under the ASX Listing Rules and the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). The group members are also alleged to have suffered loss as a result of BHP engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct contrary to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth) and the Corporations Act. This appeal was heard at an interlocutory stage of the representative proceeding. Part IVA does not contain any express geographic or territorial restriction on the identity of "persons" who can be group members in a representative proceeding. In this appeal, BHP argued that s 21(1)(b) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth) and the common law presumption against extraterritoriality apply so that Pt IVA must be interpreted as not permitting the inclusion of group members who are not resident in Australia. The High Court unanimously rejected this argument, holding that Pt IVA allows the inclusion of all persons as group members in a representative proceeding, irrespective of whether they are Australian residents, who have "claims" of the kind described in s 33C(1) of the Federal Court of Australia Act that are within the jurisdiction of the Federal Court. Part IVA is concerned with the powers and procedures of the Federal Court relating to the exercise of jurisdiction vested in it by other Commonwealth laws enacted under s 77(i) of the Constitution. The territorial connection of Pt IVA to Australia is direct and specific: it concerns the jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Australia. There is no basis to infer any further territorial limitation into Pt IVA.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 12 December 2006 STATE OF NEW SOUTH WALES v DOROTHY ISABEL IBBETT The High Court of Australia today upheld awards of aggravated and exemplary damages against the State of New South Wales for trespass and assault by police officers. Mrs Ibbett, 75, brought action in the NSW District Court for damages for trespass and assault after two police officers pursued her son Warren into the garage of her home at Forster on the NSW central coast. Warren Ibbett, 48, lived with his mother after his release from prison in 1997 for armed robbery. About 2am on 23 January 2001, while Mrs Ibbett was asleep, Mr Ibbett arrived home in his van, pursued by an unmarked police car for speeding. He drove into the garage and closed the roller door with a remote control. As the door was closing, Senior Constable Darren Pickavance slid under it and with his service pistol drawn sought to arrest Mr Ibbett. Senior Constable Pickavance had no basis for making such an arrest or entering the property. Neither officer was in uniform but wore casual clothing. Mrs Ibbett was woken by the commotion. When she went into the garage Senior Constable Pickavance swung his gun towards her. He ordered Mrs Ibbett to open the garage door to let in Senior Constable Peter Harman. The officers handcuffed Mr Ibbett and pushed him down on to the driveway. His van was moved on to the driveway and searched. He was taken back into the garage and strip-searched. Criminal proceedings were commenced against Mr Ibbett but the charges were later dropped. Judge Colin Phegan found that the entry on to the property by Senior Constables Pickavance and Harman was without lawful justification and amounted to trespass. He held that Senior Constable Pickavance caused such an apprehension of harm on Mrs Ibbett’s part it amounted to assault. Judge Phegan awarded Mrs Ibbett $50,000 for trespass, made up of $10,000 in general damages, $20,000 in aggravated damages and $20,000 in exemplary damages, and $25,000 for assault, made up of $15,000 in general damages and $10,000 in exemplary damages. The Court of Appeal dismissed the State’s appeal and allowed Mrs Ibbett’s cross-appeal. It increased the total damages to $100,000 by awarding another $15,000 in exemplary damages and $10,000 in aggravated damages for the assault. The State appealed to the High Court. The Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. The State complained that by awarding general, aggravated and exemplary damages for trespass the State was punished twice for the same wrong. The High Court held that the Court of Appeal’s upholding of the award of aggravated damages was consistent with basic principle. It held that the Court of Appeal was mindful of the conceptual distinction between the compensatory nature of aggravated damages and the punitive and deterrent nature of exemplary damages. The Court of Appeal was also aware of the dangers of an excessive overall award where factors supporting one head of damages could also support the other.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 13 June 2018 MILORAD TRKULJA (AKA MICHAEL TRKULJA) v GOOGLE LLC [2018] HCA 25 Today the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria that summarily dismissed a defamation proceeding brought by the appellant against the respondent. The appellant claimed that the respondent defamed him by publishing certain search results in response to particular searches made using the Google search engine, for example, "melbourne underworld crime". Those search results included images of the appellant mixed with images of convicted Melbourne criminals, text referring to the appellant, and predictions generated by Google's autocomplete functionality. The search results allegedly conveyed that the appellant was a "hardened and serious criminal in Melbourne", someone in the same league as, or an associate of, other named criminals, and "such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld that events involving him are recorded on a website that chronicles crime". The respondent brought an application seeking to set aside the proceeding and its service outside jurisdiction on three bases: first, that it had not published the allegedly defamatory search results; second, that the search results in issue were not defamatory of the appellant; and third, that it was entitled to immunity from suit. The primary judge rejected the application. On appeal, the Court of Appeal considered the first ground but ultimately found it unnecessary to decide that ground, and rejected the third ground. The Court of Appeal upheld the second ground on the basis that the search results were not capable of bearing the defamatory imputations pleaded. The Court of Appeal accordingly held that the appellant's proceeding had no real prospect of success and ordered that the proceeding, and its service, be set aside. By grant of special leave, the appellant appealed to the High Court. The Court held that it was evident that at least some of the search results complained of had the capacity to convey to an ordinary reasonable person viewing the search results that the appellant was somehow associated with the Melbourne criminal underworld, and, therefore, that the search results had the capacity to convey one or more of the defamatory imputations alleged. The Court of Appeal had therefore erred in concluding that the proceeding had no real prospect of success. The High Court also observed that the Court of Appeal had erred in making a purportedly determinative finding of mixed fact and law that a search engine proprietor, like the respondent, is a publisher of search results, but that an innocent dissemination defence will almost always be maintainable in a period before notification of an alleged defamation. Given the nature of the proceeding, there should not have been a summary determination of issues relating to publication or possible defences, at least until after discovery, and possibly at all. Accordingly, the appeal was allowed.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 7 August 2013 LEO AKIBA ON BEHALF OF THE TORRES STRAIT REGIONAL SEAS CLAIM GROUP v COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA & ORS [2013] HCA 33 Today the High Court unanimously held that successive Commonwealth and Queensland legislation, which prohibited taking fish and other aquatic life for commercial purposes without a licence, did not extinguish the native title right of certain island communities in the Torres Strait to take resources from defined areas of water. The Court unanimously held that certain reciprocity-based rights between members of the island communities did not constitute native title rights and interests within the meaning of s 223 of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). The appellant, on behalf of 13 island communities in the Torres Strait, sought a determination of native title over a large part of the waters of the Torres Strait. In August 2010, the Federal Court of Australia made a native title determination which defined the native title rights held by each of the communities. In defining the native title rights and interests, the Federal Court rejected the appellant's claim that certain reciprocal rights, which arose out of personal relationships in Islander society, were rights in relation to land or waters and were thereby native title rights. The determination did, however, include the native title right to access and take for any purpose resources in the native title areas. One of the ways in which that right could be exercised was by the taking of fish or other aquatic life for commercial purposes. Throughout the litigation, the appellant accepted that such commercial fishing could only be undertaken if any necessary statutory licences had been obtained. The first respondent appealed the Federal Court's decision to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia in relation to the native title right to access and take resources for any purpose. The appellant cross-appealed in relation to the conclusion that reciprocal rights were not native title rights and interests. The Full Court allowed the first respondent's appeal, holding that successive Commonwealth and Queensland fisheries legislation had extinguished any native title right to take fish and other aquatic life for commercial purposes. The Full Court rejected the appellant's cross-appeal, holding that the reciprocal rights were not rights in relation to the waters the subject of the native title determination. By special leave, the appellant appealed to the High Court. The High Court held that the successive statutory regimes which prohibited commercial fishing without a licence were not inconsistent with the continued existence of the native title right to access and take for any purpose resources in the native title areas. The Court also held that the claimed reciprocal rights were rights of a personal character dependent upon status. Such rights were not rights in relation to the waters the subject of the native title determination.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 15 June 2006 ISLAND MARITIME LIMITED v BARBARA FILIPOWSKI SACHIN KULKARNI v BARBARA FILIPOWSKI The owner and master of a ship which allegedly discharged oil into Botany Bay were not subjected to double jeopardy when they faced a second trial over the incident, the High Court of Australia held today. The Pacific Onyx, owned by Island Maritime and under master Sachin Kulkarni, allegedly dropped the oil on 14 November 1999. In February 2002, prosecutor Barbara Filipowski, the general counsel with the Sydney Ports Authority, filed two summonses in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court alleging a contravention by both Island Maritime and Mr Kulkarni of section 27 of the NSW Marine Pollution Act covering discharges during transfer operations. A trial proceeded 12 months later but Justice Angus Talbot dismissed the summonses, finding there was no case to answer. In November 2003, two further summonses were filed alleging that section 8, concerning discharge of oil from a ship into State waters, rather than section 27, had been contravened. Ms Filipowski intended to present the same evidence. The penalties were the same. Island Maritime and Mr Kulkarni, the appellants, sought a permanent stay of the second summonses on the grounds that proceedings were barred by the principles of autrefois acquit (formerly acquitted) or that the proceedings were an abuse of process. Justice Neal Bignold dismissed the application for a stay and the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed an appeal. The appellants appealed to the High Court. The Court unanimously dismissed the appeals. It held that the possibility of a bar based on the principles of autrefois acquit does not exist because the appellants were never actually in jeopardy on the first set of summonses, so there was no double jeopardy in having to answer another charge. There could not have been a valid conviction because those summonses were defective. The appellants could have taken exception to the first summonses but did not. The charges in the second set of summonses were not the same as in the first set. Although the conduct of the case was unsatisfactory it did not amount to an abuse of process.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 2 February 2011 MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & CITIZENSHIP v SZGUR & ANOR [2011] HCA 1 The Refugee Review Tribunal ("RRT") made adverse credibility findings against SZGUR, an applicant for a protection visa. The RRT sent SZGUR a letter inviting him to comment on or respond to inconsistencies and contradictions in information provided by him during the application and review process. In response, SZGUR's migration agent suggested that the inconsistencies and contradictions may have been related to SZGUR's alleged mental health problems, and requested that the RRT "arrange independent assessment of [SZGUR's] mental health, if required". Section 427(1)(d) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) relevantly empowered the RRT to require the Secretary to arrange for a medical examination. The RRT did not request the arranging of any such examination, and refused SZGUR's visa application. An application to the Federal Magistrates Court for judicial review was dismissed. On appeal to the Federal Court, Rares J held that the RRT failed to consider the agent's request, and that this failure constituted a constructive failure to exercise jurisdiction. Today the High Court allowed an appeal by the Minister against the decision of the Federal Court. It held that there was insufficient evidence to indicate that the RRT had failed to consider the agent's request. The Court also took the view that the relevant provisions of the Act did not create any general obligation on the RRT to consider whether to exercise the power in s 427(1)(d). Pursuant to an undertaking given to the Court, the Minister was ordered to pay SZGUR's costs.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 7 September 2012 PLAINTIFF S10/2011 v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR; KAUR v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR; PLAINTIFF S49/2011 v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR; PLAINTIFF S51/2011 v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR [2012] HCA 31 Today the High Court dismissed four applications for declaratory relief and the issue of certiorari and constitutional writs against the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship ("the Minister") and the Secretary for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Sections 48B, 195A, 351 and 417 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) ("the Act") confer powers upon the Minister to intervene with respect to the granting of visas under the Act. The powers may only be exercised by the Minister personally and the Minister cannot be compelled to exercise them. Each of the plaintiffs in these proceedings had sought to invoke the exercise by the Minister of those powers after having unsuccessfully sought merits review and, in some cases, judicial review of a decision to refuse to grant a visa. The plaintiffs submitted that in deciding whether or not to consider the exercise of the relevant powers, or deciding whether or not to exercise those powers, the Minister was obliged to afford natural justice or procedural fairness to the plaintiffs. The High Court dismissed the plaintiffs' applications, finding that the distinct nature of the powers conferred on the Minister by the Act meant that the exercise of the powers is not conditioned on the observance of the principles of procedural fairness.