Key Points
- Former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has been ordered to pay the legal costs of several media outlets.
- It follows his failed defamation action against Nine newspapers and The Canberra Times alleging he committed war crimes.
- He has not been criminally charged and has since appealed the decision.
Former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has been ordered to pay the legal costs of several media outlets following over allegations he committed war crimes.
The Federal Court ruled in June that articles published by Nine newspapers and The Canberra Times alleging Roberts-Smith's involvement in four murders while deployed in Afghanistan were substantially true.
He was on Tuesday ordered by the court to pay the outlets' legal costs assessed on an indemnity basis for the long-running defamation trial, which took 110 days to hear.
Justice Anthony Besanko accepted the publishers' argument Mr Roberts-Smith should pay indemnity costs from the start of the legal proceedings because he knew a number of the allegations made by the papers were true.
"The applicant knew what had occurred at W108, Darwan and Chinartu," Justice Besanko stated in his reasons.
"He knew that that would be sufficient to establish the substantial truth of the most serious imputations and ... to lead to the dismissal of the proceedings he brought."
Roberts-Smith had previously agreed he should pay the publishers' legal fees on an indemnity basis only from March 2020, and on a standard party-party basis before that.
Indemnity costs are those beyond what the court would normally impose, generally allowing the applicant to recoup a larger proportion of their legal fees.
Estimates have pegged the cost for the opposing parties at exceeding $25 million.
Nine-owned titles The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as well as The Canberra Times, reported allegations the SAS soldier was involved in the murders of four unarmed prisoners.
The publishers' barrister, Nicholas Owens, told the court earlier this year Roberts-Smith sued to conceal the truth and would have succeeded in that pursuit had the newspapers failed to prove their claims.
"It must be the case, inevitably and necessarily, that the applicant commenced these proceedings and continued these proceedings knowing those imputations sued upon were in fact true," he said.
