Lenah Game Meats Pty Ltd Vs Australian Broadcasting Company

Lenah Game Meats PTY LTD vs Australian Broadcasting Company

(a) In which court is the matter being determined, who are the parties to the case and what are their roles in the action, e.g. plaintiff, defendant, appellant?

The matter is being determined in the High Court of Australia, this is the highest court in the Australian judicial system.

The Appellant is The Australian Broadcasting Company.

The respondent is Lenah Game Meats PTY LTD.

(b) What are the key facts in the case?

Lenah Game Meats PTY LTD (Lenah) is an abattoir located in Tasmania. The abattoir services international contracts via the slaughtering of brush tail possums to produce possum meat and skins (Rogers 2010). Lenah took action against The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) seeking an interlocutory injunction to prevent publication of footage of its possum slaughtering operations. The footage had been obtained via hidden cameras in the walls and ceilings of Lenah’s meat factory. The film was made by an unknown person who supplied the film to Animal Liberation, who passed the footage onto the ABC (Arasaratnam and Byrne, 2002). The ABC planned to screen the footage on the ABC’s 7.30 report. Lenah was concerned the screening would cause it financial harm as the footage contained gruesome parts of its processing activities and that this was likely to evoke public distress and anger (Arasaratnam and Byrne, 2002).

The ABC in its7.30 report program on 4 May 1999 broadcast a segment of the Lenah abattoir footage; this followed an unsuccessful attempt by Lenah to obtain an interlocutory injunction in the Tasmanian Supreme Court (Stewart, 2002). Lenah followed this with a successful appeal in the Full Court and was granted an interlocutory injunction. The ABC then appealed to the High Court to have the interlocutory injunction lifted (Stewart, 2002).

(c) What was the outcome in the case? Who won in the end?

Lenah relied on three grounds in claiming that an injunction should be granted:

1. Trespass to land

2. Breach of confidential information; and

3. A right to privacy.

ABC argued against the injunction claiming that:

1. There was an invalid basis for the interlocutory injunction; and

2. The constitution provided an implied right to freedom of political communication. (Widget- c blogspot 2007)

The ABC was successful in the High Court appeal. The court, in a 5:1 split decision allowed the appeal and did not issue an interlocutory injunction.