Rebel Wilson suffers setback in recovering Bauer defamation costs
In a rare setback in her defamation battle against Bauer Media, Rebel Wilson’s application to have gross costs awarded against the publisher has failed in the Victorian Supreme Court this morning.
The Guardian Australia reports Justice John Dixon ruled that while Bauer will be liable for most of Wilson’s costs, the final amount will not be settled until later in the year and rejected her lawyer’s attempts to have $1.3 million awarded to her immediately.
Today’s ruling is rare win for Bauer in the case which saw Wilson awarded $4.5 million last September, the biggest defamation payout in Australian history.
Last month the court rejected an attempt by Australia’s largest media companies to join Bauer in an appeal against damages award.
Wilson sued Bauer over a series of stories published in 2015 and 2016, including a Woman’s Day story titled ‘Just who is the REAL Rebel?’ In her case she argued the ‘serial liar’ allegations had ruined her reputation and cost her lucrative movie roles.
The articles alleged Wilson had lied about her age, her name and her upbringing in Australia, and were featured across Australian magazines, including Bauer’s Australian Women’s Weekly, New Weekly and OK Magazine.
Mumbrella has contacted Rebel Wilson’s management for comment.
I hope that when Rebel gets her cash she pays out a big chunk of it to the ‘wrong’ Lizzie Wilson (a Pac Mags staffer completely unrelated to the Bauer case) whose name and photo she published while making false accusations of harassment. What Rebel did to Lizzie is the same thing she’s accusing Bauer of doing – essentially, defamation. I hope Lizzie can get some compensation for the wrong done to her.
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