Ashurst Australia has come up against a feisty anti-nuclear campaigner who refuses to back down … Fairfax settles, but the offending material is still out there … Dealing with lawyers’ letters … Defamatorium 

IN February we reported that crack legal teams had been working overtime to settle a defamation complaint against Fairfax Media and ace Sydney Morning Herald business reporter Michael West. 

The complaint came from well regarded Ashurst partner Sophie Dawson who, in turn, spends a lot of her fee earning moments defending what passes for journalism in The Daily Ruperts. 

Dawson was upset by West’s article of December 19, 2012, Anti-nuke campaigner braces for legal blast. 

We reported that West criticised a letter of demand Dawson wrote to anti-nuclear campaigner Ms Noel Wauchope, a 75-year-old pensioner, on behalf of client uranium company Paladin Energy and Paladin’s general manager of international affairs, Greg Walker. 

West had given Dawson an opportunity to comment, but none was forthcoming, and his article had been legalled by Johnson Winter Slattery. 

Wauchope claimed on her website that Paladin had breached a “social responsibility” agreement with the community at Karonga in Malawi, where it was mining uranium. 

Dawson’s letter of demand claimed that an article, Australian uranium company Paladin and its mess-up in Malawi posted on the website AntiNuclear was defamatory of her clients, was false and should be removed from the internet, and a correction and grovel be published.   

She added: 

“Please note that you must not publish this letter or its contents to any person or in any form, except to your legal advisors on a confidential basis.” 

“Thank you for publishing Ms Dawson’s response on your websites. 

She did that adding an editor’s note: 

“I don’t understand why Fairfax  withdrew the article from their online publication, as I thought that the article was true. I understand that the journalist who wrote that article stands by the story and has not accepted the claims made by Ashurst. I am posting below, the article in question, published earlier on this website.” 

There are some further feisty reader comments about Ashurst’s client Paladin. 

So while Fairfax signed onto the settlement, the 75-year-old pensioner didn’t, West didn’t and the material is still out there. 

So much for settling defamation claims in the internet age.