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Appeal allows defamation case to proceed against Nine

Case will centre around a story that implied a family was responsible for the deaths of 12 people in the 2011 Grantham floods.

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A defamation case triggered by a 60 Minutes story will proceed against Nine after a Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Queensland’s Wagner family.

Wagner Group’s Denis Wagner and his brothers are suing over a story they say implied the family was responsible for the deaths of 12 people in the 2011 Grantham floods.

Three judges set aside a 2016 order by Supreme Court Justice David Boddice to strike out parts of the Wagners’ statement of claim, saying the broadcast did not necessarily imply the family “was responsible for the catastrophic flood”, even though it referred to the family’s quarry wall bursting and causing the disaster.

Justice Anthe Philippides found the broadcast was capable of conveying the Wagners caused the flood by failing to take steps to prevent the quarry wall from collapsing.

“The statements that the deadly flood was a ‘man-made’ intervention and that what occurred was ‘not just a freak flood but a man-made catastrophe that should have been avoided but wasn’t’ were capable of being understood as conveying that someone was responsible,” she said.

Last year, a commission of inquiry cleared the family of any responsibility.

Mr Sofronoff said Denis Wagner and his family had been unfairly targeted as the culprit for the flood.

Source: ABC

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