RAYNEY -v- THE STATE OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA [No 9] [2017] WASC 367 (15 December 2017)

1 The plaintiff, Mr Lloyd Patrick Rayney, claimed damages for defamation arising from a series of media conferences conducted by Detective Senior Sergeant Jack Lee during the course of an investigation into the murder of the plaintiff's wife, Mrs Corryn Rayney. The plaintiff claimed that the words used by DSS Lee in four media conferences conducted by him, or alternatively the words spoken at the last of the four conferences on 20 September 2007, bore the imputation that the plaintiff had murdered his wife. In the alternative, the plaintiff pleaded that the words meant that the plaintiff had so conducted himself as to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that he had murdered his wife.

2 The defendant, the State of Western Australia, denied that the words used bore either of the meanings pleaded by the plaintiff. It contended, however, that if the words did bear the plaintiff's alternative meaning, they were true. The defendant pleaded that the words used by DSS Lee bore a different meaning being that the police suspected the plaintiff of having murdered or unlawfully killed his wife and had reasonable cause for so suspecting, and that that imputation was true. The defendant also contended that if, contrary to its denial, the words did bear either of the meanings pleaded by the plaintiff, then they were uttered on an occasion which attracted the defence of qualified privilege, either under the Defamation Act 2005 (WA) or at common law.