Kerry Stokes, Seven forced to hand over Roberts-Smith case emails

afr.com:

Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes and his commercial director Bruce McWilliam will be forced to hand over thousands of their emails exchanged with Ben Roberts-Smith’s legal team as Nine pursues Seven West Media for the costs of the disgraced soldier’s failed defamation action.

Mr Stokes’ private company Australian Capital Equity funded Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal claims against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times via a loan agreement with the former SAS trooper.

Kerry Stokes and Ben Roberts-Smith. 

The combined costs of the legal proceedings could top $35 million. Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation action in early June. Nine is seeking to force ACE and potentially Seven Network (Operations) Ltd, which Mr Roberts-Smith initially had a loan agreement with, to pay for its costs.

Nine is seeking to show ACE and Seven were key in the litigation and controlled the process. Nine made an application seeking documents and communications about the case between Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal team, Mr Stokes, Mr McWilliam and ACE – which was resisted. However, on Monday, Justice Besanko largely dismissed Mr Stokes, Mr McWilliam and ACE’s attempts to have the subpoenas issued to them set aside.

The emails will need to be produced before the costs hearing, set down for early September. Within the cache will be more than 8600 emails exchanged between Mr McWilliam and Mr Roberts-Smith’s team.

Justice Besanko’s decision in June found the newspapers had proven Mr Roberts-Smith broke the rules of war, is a war criminal, murderer, bully, and disgraced his country and the army by his conduct in Afghanistan.

Last month, Mr Roberts-Smith filed a notice of appeal in the Federal Court.