A jury in the High Court at Wellington found Kāpiti Coast investment adviser Chris Lee guilty of defamation against property tycoon Sir Bob Jones today.
Sir Bob has been awarded $104,000 for the hurt he suffered over a critical article which suggested he had inflated his investment company’s assets to increase his management fee.
Lee was the article’s author.
The result could have been worse for Lee as Sir Bob had been seeking up to $800,000 in damages.
The article, published in Wellington community paper City Life in April 2007, criticised a contract between Robert Jones Holdings and Robert Jones Investments.
Sir Robert had earlier told the court he had given Mr Lee the opportunity to apologise or retract his statement but he did not.
He said the “scurrilous” article effectively accused him of committing “one of the worst commercial crimes in our history”.
“He’s entitled to express an opinion but he overstated the truth by 1100 percent.
“When he slurs like he did about me, I’m going to do something about it.”
The management contract that the article was referring to was between Sir Robert’s then publicly listed company, Robt Jones Investments Limited, and his private company, Robt Jones Holdings Limited.
The article incorrectly said the investment company paid 8 percent of its gross assets to the holding company as a management fee. The fee was actually 8 percent of its gross income.
Lee’s attorney Matthew McClelland said Lee acknowledged his mistake in the original article when he referred to gross assets instead of income, but that didn’t lessen his opinion that Jones’ contract was “ridiculous and absurd.”
Lee’s defence of ‘honest opinion’ was clearly not a view shared by the jury.
After the guilty verdict Lee released a statement saying it was not the result he wanted and that there would be “no morning tea for the staff on Monday”.