Actress Rebel Wilson received U.S. $3.6 million from her defamation lawsuit against Australia’s tabloid magazine. Wilson contended that some of the articles made about her were defamatory resulting to her losing some acting gigs.
The Australian Tabloid Magazine involved in the lawsuit was identified as Bauer Media. This publisher published the Woman’s Day magazine, which came up with a story saying that the comedienne and actress is a serial liar and that she fabricated stories in order to make it in Hollywood. They claimed that Wilson lied about her name, age, and childhood.
The article was published in May 2015, Cosmopolitan shared.
The judge who handled the case, Justice John Dixon, said that the publication failed to establish that their claims against Wilson were true, CNN reported. Accordingly, Bauer Media did not make efforts to investigate the claims of the source regarding Wilson.
$3.6M is the biggest defamation payout in Australian history
The amount that the judge awarded to the “Pitch Perfect” actress was the biggest defamation pay in Australian history. Basically, $522,000 were awarded to Wilson for the general damages and $3.1 million was awarded to her due to special damages since she lost a lot of potential roles when the articles was published. Justice Dixon noted that the high amount was needed in order to put out the message that defamation is a serious matter and is not taken lightly.
The lawyer of Wilson, Richard Leder, echoed the Justice’s statement noting that the decision recognized the “serious harm caused to Rebel’s reputation.”
Wilson releases statement on Twitter
Days after the reports confirmed that Wilson won the defamation lawsuit, she took to Twitter to release a lengthy statement. She said that her long and hard court battle against Bauer Media has ended.
She also said that Justice Dixon knew the statements from the paid anonymous source were false and that because the actress had an extremely high reputation and the damage inflicted to her was substantial, the amount that Bauer Media has to pay was of importance.
Wilson revealed she will not keep all the money to herself. She will donate parts of it to Australian charities.
She ended her series of tweets by thanking people who loved and supported her throughout the ordeal.
Bauer Media, on the other hand, said they are still going through the decision. They have not released any official statement yet.
