Liability for tortious communications 415
Professor F A Trindade
15 points * Two 1.5-hour lectures per week * First semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: See section 3 of faculty resolutions
This subject involves a study of three types of tortious communications: (1) those statements, essentially false, which lower a person's character in the estimation of reasonable people or which cause the person about whom the statement is made to be hated, shunned or ridiculed by reasonable people (these matters are traditionally discussed by those dealing with the tort of defamation and will form the principal part of the subject); (2) those statements both true and false which could be said to invade the true privacy interest, the interest in retaining individual personality; (3) the liability of a person who having been entrusted with confidential information wrongfully uses that information or discloses it to a third party. While there will be a strong emphasis on law reform in the subject, an attempt will be made to present a thorough knowledge of the technical law, both substantive and procedural.
Assessment
One class test (75 minutes): 25% * Final written examination (3 hours): 75%
Prescribed texts
Australian Law Reform Commission Unfair publication: Defamation and privacy (Report No. 11) AGPS, Canberra, 1979
New South Wales Law Reform Commission Defamation (Discussion Paper 32) Sydney, 1993