Defamation development: Comments on social media increase the scope of potential liability

In a significant development in defamation law, the District Court of South Australia has held that a person can be held liable for the defamatory comments made by other social media users following that person's original social media post.

In the case of Johnston v Aldridge [2018] SADC 68, the Court awarded the Plaintiff damages assessed at $100,000 (inclusive of aggravated damages), after the Plaintiff successfully argued that not only was the Defendant's initial Facebook post concerning the Plaintiff defamatory, but so too were certain of the approximately 4,500 comments that followed the Defendant's post. Critically, the Court held although these comments were not authored by the Defendant they were attributable to the Defendant as a 'secondary' publisher of the material.