An expensive comedian: Mick Molloy. Mrs Cornes, wife of former AFL coach Graham Cornes, was vindicated yesterday after winning a defamation suit over insinuations by Molloy on Before the Game in June 2008.
Molloy suggested Mrs Cornes had slept with former AFL player Stuart Dew, a friend of her stepson, Port Adelaide footballer Chad Cornes.
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''I just stood up for what I believed in,'' she said after being awarded $85,000 damages in the Supreme Court of South Australia.She had told the court she felt like a dirty joke when she saw the program.
''I felt that they were sexually ridiculing me for conduct that never happened … and I was just a dirty joke and they were just laughing at me,'' she said in evidence.
Mrs Cornes also shunned the world for a while. ''I just did not want to go out there and have to deal with people raising it, or talking about it, or whispering about it, or about you; questioning whether it's true.''
Her husband, Graham, a presenter with radio station 5AA Adelaide, told the court the ''staggering'' remark had cast a shadow of doubt over his wife's fidelity, even if he knew it was not true.
Molloy's on-air apology in September 2008 had not lessened the hurt, he said.
Ten's lawyer, Dick Whitington QC, argued the joke was not meant to be taken literally given the humorous context of the show.
But Mrs Cornes's lawyer, Stuart Littlemore QC, had argued Molloy's joke was defamatory because it suggested Ms Cornes was promiscuous and committed adultery.
''His conduct in directing sexual ridicule to Mrs Cornes and traducing her good name for a laugh was not that of an entertainer but a lout,'' he said.
It was hard to imagine what worse defamation could be broadcast to impugn a woman's ''self-respect and dignity''.
Justice David Peek said Mrs Cornes was entitled to be vindicated. He said she was entitled to a sum of money big enough to show people that ''the publishers were the losers and that the court clearly recognised that she had been wrongly defamed''. AAP
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/ten-pays-cost-of-molloys-sex-slur-20110705-1h0rn.html#ixzz1RJNiuJpg
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