Appeal follows defamation win for Erin Molan

Daily Mail Australia is appealing findings and damages following a high profile defamation case won by Erin Molan.

Justice Robert Bromwich said each side had a “measure of success and a measure of failure”.

The court found five of the eight imputations Molan alleged were wrongly conveyed by the Daily Mail, including that she “deliberately mocked the names of Pacific Islanders on air” and that her “inability to pronounce the names of Polynesian NRL players is so disrespectful and incompetent that she is unfit to be an NRL commentator”.

Bromwich found that Molan was not putting on a Polynesian or Pacific Islander accent on the radio program but rather putting on an accent of her colleague Ray Warren who had stumbled over the names.

While the judge ruled in Molan’s favour, she was still found to have been “ignorant or thoughtless” and caused offence by saying the words on air.

However, Bromwich found that “the most serious pleaded imputation” that Molan is a racist, was not conveyed.

Daily Mail argued a truth defence and denied running an illegitimate campaign against her.

The publication is now appealing against the judge’s adverse findings on grounds he erred on 13 points and the damages of $150,000 awarded Molan were ‘manifestly excessive’.

The appeal is set to go before a three-judge panel in the Full Federal Court in Sydney.