Canning mayor wins $250,000 payout over defamatory Facebook posts

The City of Canning mayor has won $250,000 in damages after the Supreme Court found a ratepayer published a fake Facebook post falsely portraying him endorsing a Federal MP, as part of an “obsessive” smear campaign to paint him as corrupt.

In a decision delivered on Wednesday, WA Supreme Court Justice Marcus Solomon found Richard Clive Aldridge published ten defamatory publications about Patrick Hall between September 2021 to September 2022, most of them via Facebook.

A fake endorsement Aldridge shared with regulators.Credit: WA Supreme Court

The judgment traced the origins of contempt to a long-running dispute over Shelley Beach Park, an off-leash dog beach on the Canning River foreshore where Hall supported a cafe proposal, which Aldrifge opposed.

Justice Solomon found Aldridge turned his focus to Hall endorsing Canning council candidates via his mayoral Facebook page.

City of Canning Mayor Patrick Hall.Credit: Facebook

The judge said “the volume and persistence” and some content within Aldridge’s complaints and applications “bordered on the bizarre”.

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“I have concluded that Mr Aldridge’s lack of objectivity and obsessive contempt for Mr Hall is so entrenched and pervasive that his evidence cannot be relied upon unless it is corroborated by contemporaneous documentary evidence,” Justice Solomon found.

The most serious publication was a fake advertisement of Hall endorsing former Liberal MP Ben Morton using his mayoral title, which Aldridge had included in complaints to authorities.

Justice Solomon found it conveyed imputations that Hall had breached the law and engaged in corrupt conduct.

The judge found a mayor was entitled to endorse candidates for local government elections.

In March 2022, Aldridge lodged 11 separate minor breach complaints to the Local Government Standards panel, exceeding 300 pages, each alleging a breach due to Hall’s endorsement of candidates, the judgment stated.

None of those complaints were successful.

Mr Aldridge, who represented himself at trial, argued the posts were protected by honest opinion. 

Justice Solomon accepted Aldridge honestly believed his views but found they were driven by contempt.

“Mr Aldridge’s obsessive preoccupation with Mr Hall created a dogged self-righteousness that blinded him to any objective perspective and disabled him from a rational response,” Justice Solomon said.

Justice Solomon found that continuing to publish allegations after repeated adverse rulings demonstrated “unreasonableness” and “malice”.

Justice Solomon accepted evidence the campaign caused harm to Hall and his family.

“I was left with no doubt that Mr Hall was quite severely impacted, emotionally and psychologically, by Mr Aldridge’s conduct,” he wrote.

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