Colin Craig vs Jordan Williams Court of Appeal decision

The Court of Appeal has come out with their verdict…

…as a witness in this case, it was apparent to me that the Judy didn’t seem to have any comprehension whatsoever of defamation law.

There’s no love lost between the head of the Taxpayers’ Union Jordan Williams and his political adversary Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury.

“How does one be complimentary about a venomous spider, I don’t like the guy, no,” Mr Bradbury says.

Mr Craig invited Mr Bradbury to court to criticise the tactics of Mr Williams and bloggers like Cameron Slater.

“I think that Mr Williams and his friends are political sadists who are a cancer on the body politic of this country,” Mr Bradbury says.

In Mr Bradbury’s view this was less a trial about Mr Craig’s relationship with Ms MacGregor and more about Mr Williams’ angry fight with Mr Craig.

‘Pack of hyenas’ turned on Craig

Media commentator and blogger Martyn Bradbury was also called today to give evidence about his previous experience with Williams.

He claimed in court that in the past Williams had lied to him directly and “created a fake email identity” which he used to “send a false tip-off”.

He said Williams had embarked on a “political hit job” against Craig and described him as one of “a pack of hyenas” who had turned on the former politician.

“I thought (Craig’s pamphlet Dirty Politics and Hidden Agenda) was an appropriate response to a pack of political sadists,” Bradbury said.

He told the jury he thought Williams and a number of others he felt were involved in the practice of dirty politics in New Zealand were “a cancer on the body politics in this
country”.

Bradbury was asked what he thought the defamation trial was about and replied: “an angry fight between two people who don’t like each other much”.

Under cross-examination Williams’ lawyer Peter Knight grilled Bradbury about his posting blogs that had “derogatory, horrible and sleazy” comments about his client before he gave evidence.

He asked Bradbury if he thought it appropriate to “attack” Williams online given he was coming to court to give evidence against him days later.

Bradbury admitted posting about the trial last week but said he had not posted about his own evidence.

“Did you think it was appropriate given you were going to be a witness, to do that?” said McKnight.

“My understanding was that I could not talk about my evidence, I didn’t realise I couldn’t blog about breaking news,” he said.

The Court case wasn’t whether Colin Craig was awful, the Court case was whether or not what Colin had to say about Jordan Williams was defamatory and would lower Jordan in the eyes of a reasonable person.

That question seemed to have been answered on the first day when Jordan admitted gaining information from Rachel regarding Colin, promising not to tell anyone on his honour as a lawyer the information she’d given him in confidence and then telling everyone in an attempt to remove Colin Craig as Leader of the Conservative Party.

What a charmer.

The Court of Appeal has agreed the Jury’s contempt of Colin Craig outweighed the compensation and that Jordan William’s reputation meant he wasn’t worth $1million.

A wretched ugly business.