The Highest Court in Australia, the High Court of Australia, has handed down a decision in the case of Dow Jones & Company Inc v Gutnick. The decision is available on Austlii.
The High Court has dismissed an appeal by Dow Jones against a decision of a Victorian judge, which held that Dow Jones could be sued in Victoria for defamation, in relation to an article in its online subscription service. The article related to a Victorian man, and was read in Victoria. Mr Gutnick undertook not to sue Dow Jones in any other country, but argued that he was seeking to vindicate his "Victorian reputation". Dow Jones had argued that if it could be sued in Victoria, it could be subject to laws all over the world. The decision means that Victorian defamation law will be applied in the case - not the more free-speech protective American law.
UPDATE: A news story from the Australian newspaper is now available, with some comments on the implications of the decision.
From a brief reading, it appears that the High Court majority have rejected a "single publication rule" for widely disseminated publications, holding that the need to reduce the number of suits to which a single defendant may be subjected does "not require that a single place of publication be identified in eveyr defamation case no matter how widely the defamatory material is disseminated."
Further, the Court has held that, ordinarily, the place of a tort (and thus the place whose law will apply) in the case of defamation is where the damage to reputation occurs - ie not New Jersey, where the Dow Jones server was, but Victoria, where the material was downloaded. It is where the person downloads the material that the damage to reputation may be done; ordinarily then, that will be the place where the tort of defamation is committed. The law that will apply, in this case, where Gutnick only seeks to vindicate the damage to his reputation in Victoria, is Victorian law.
The end of the majority decision seems consciously to leave open questions that arise where the complaint concerns injury to reputation which is said to have occurred as a result of publications ina number of places. If there is more than one action, questions of vexation may arise. Secondly, the court suggests that the 'reasonableness of the publisher's conduct' may need to be considered by reference at least in part to where the publisher's conduct occurred, and the rules regarding defamation there.