Adjudication No. 503 (June 1991) [1991] APC 37

ADJUDICATION No. 503 (June 1991)

The Press Council has upheld claims by a solicitor that an article in the Geraldton Guardian damaged a client's prospects of receiving a fair trial on charges he was facing.

Mr Richard Hunt complains about an article in the Guardian concerning Police charges against James Morgan on alleged drug offences.

The article contained details of five separate charges, and of the Police raid on Mr Morgan's house which had led to their being ]aid. It also reported Mr Hunt's successful application for his client to be remanded on bail.

Mr Hunt believes that the article far exceeded the bounds of acceptability in what he described as a report of Court proceedings. He considered that publication of alleged details of the Police raid was irresponsible, libellous to his client, and that it had "caused a situation whereby (Mr Morgan) is unable to obtain a fair trial in Geraldton".

The Guardian's editor, whom Mr Hunt approached six weeks after the article appeared, checked the circumstances under which it had been compiled, and reported to Mr Hunt that the information it contained was accurate and bad all been made freely available by the Geraldton Police.

The article's account of the raid on Mr Morgan's house was clearly presented throughout in terms of a Police internal document, and not as a statement of fact. It was possible that many of the allegations contained in the document would have been made in Court at the opening of the trial, when Mr Hunt would have had an opportunity to dispute them; in fact, only some of them were made. Nevertheless, the prior publication of all the allegations was potentially prejudicial to Mr Morgan's fair trial.

The complaint is upheld.