New Zealand Case Law: Decisions & Judgments | LexChat

New Zealand Case Law

Sexual harassment

  • 4 May 2021

    CRAIG v MACGREGOR [2021] NZCA 156

    Citation
    [2021] NZCA 156
    Court
    Court of Appeal

    The appeal is dismissed. The Court upheld the High Court finding that Mr Craig sexually harassed Ms MacGregor (consistent with this Court's earlier decision in Craig v Slater) and rejected appellant's attempt to relitigate the same factual conclusion absent materially different evidence. The Court held reply-to-attack qualified privilege is not defeated merely because the original attack was true, but it is lost where the defendant took improper advantage of the occasion, lacked honest belief, acted with ill will or adopted an improper purpose. Here the appellant exceeded the permissible scop…

  • 6 Sept 2019

    CRAIG v MACGREGOR [2019] NZHC 2247

    Citation
    [2019] NZHC 2247
    Court
    High Court

    The Court found on the balance of probabilities that the defendant's allegation that Mr Craig sexually harassed her was substantially true and thus the truth defence succeeded for that imputation, but other imputations alleged by Mr Craig (bad employer, causing another's suicide, abusing others) were not proved true and amounted to defamation by the defendant; conversely the Court found Mr Craig's public statements and booklet imputed that Ms MacGregor had made false allegations and called her a liar and those imputations were not defended (except limited matters where truth applied regarding…

  • 19 Oct 2018

    CRAIG v SLATER [2018] NZHC 2712

    Citation
    [2018] NZHC 2712
    Court
    High Court

    On the facts proved, many of the allegations published about Craig were substantiallytrue (he was guilty of moderately serious sexual harassment of his press secretary andhe provided a substantial financial benefit in settlement which was used towithdraw a Human Rights complaint); defendants established truth or responsiblecommunication defences for most publications; however two specific publicationscontained untrue defamatory imputations (that Craig put MacGregor under financialpressure to sleep with him, and that he sexually harassed at least one other victim)for which declarations of liab…