A News Corp journalist had \u201cnot one piece of information\u201d to suggest the deputy Victorian Liberal leader, Sam Groth, began a relationship with his wife when she was underage, the MP\u2019s lawyers have told a court.<\/p>\n
In what a federal court judge described as a \u201ctest case\u201d for Australia\u2019s new privacy laws, Groth and his wife, Brittany, are suing the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), reporter Stephen Drill and the Herald Sun\u2019s editor, Sam Weir, over a series of articles published in July.<\/p>\n
The articles allege the couple met at a tennis club in suburban Melbourne and began a sexual relationship when Brittany was 16 or 17 and Sam \u2013 then a professional player \u2013 was 23 or 24 and working as her coach, the court has been told.<\/p>\n
Brittany Groth is suing over an alleged serious invasion of privacy, while her husband has alleged he was defamed by the articles.<\/p>\n
HWT is defending the reporting on public interest grounds, arguing the allegations could \u201cconstitute a criminal offence\u201d and therefore be \u201cweaponised\u201d by Groth\u2019s political opponents ahead of the 2026 Victorian state election.<\/p>\n
The tabloid is also arguing it is exempt from new privacy laws \u2013 which allow for damages of up to $478,000 \u2013 due to the exemption provided for journalists.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n But during a case management hearing in Melbourne on Thursday, the Groths\u2019 barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, argued the exemption did not apply.<\/p>\n \u201cThe defence has two elements. First you have to be a journalist or the employer of a journalist, and then it also has to be journalistic material,\u201d Chrysanthou told the court.<\/p>\n She said the laws, which were part of a pre-election rush of bills<\/a> late last year, were written in such as way as \u201cclearly parliament thought that not all publications that purport to be news are news\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe say that a proper assessment of that requires an understanding of all the information that the journalist had when they made the decision and did in fact publish this allegation,\u201d Chrysanthou said.<\/p>\n She told the court she would seek to cross-examine Drill during the trial, and use discovery to access to \u201call of the information\u201d he had at the time of publication.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had not one piece of information from any person who had any first-hand information about the circumstances of my client\u2019s relationship when they met,\u201d Chrysanthou told the court.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd [they lacked] any basis whatsoever, or any first-hand basis, to allege that there was reasonable suggestion that my client Mr Groth was engaging in a crime when he first started his relationship with his now-wife and mother of his two young children.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n HWT\u2019s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, argued the articles were clearly news, noting they appeared on the front page of Victoria\u2019s highest-circulation newspaper and concerned \u201cthe person who aspires to be the deputy premier of the state\u201d.<\/p>\n Judge Shaun McElwaine, however, noted courts in the US had \u201cgrappled for years with the tort of privacy and the first amendment\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are limits to what is news and what is salacious gossip,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Collins is seeking a hearing to determine whether the journalistic exemption applies, while Chrysanthou wants that question heard concurrently with the trial.<\/p>\n A separate hearing on the issue has been set for 6 November.<\/p>\n McElwaine noted that, as the \u201ctest case\u201d and \u201cfirst of its kind\u201d brought under the new privacy laws, it was \u201cinevitable\u201d any ruling he made would be appealed, potentially prolonging proceedings.<\/p>\n He also set a two-week trial for May 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A News Corp journalist had \u201cnot one piece of information\u201d to suggest the deputy Victorian Liberal leader, Sam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-260119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}