Press Statement by Matthew Blomfield

High Court lifts suppression on strike out of Whale Oil defamation defence

Today, the High Court lifted a suppression order on its 26 October 2018 judgment in my case against Cameron Slater. In that judgment, the High Court essentially struck-out all of Slater’s various defences against my claim of defamation.

In 2012, Cameron Slater ran a long series of articles about me on his Whale Oil website. They were vicious. They portrayed me as violent, a criminal, a fraudster, a psychopath, and more. He said anything he could to try to destroy my reputation and to destroy me. There was no truth to any of it.

I believe he did all of this because he was paid to do so. I had had a falling out with a business partner who tried to get revenge by making false allegations against me. I recognised many of the allegations Slater published as being the same ones that my ex-business partner had made. Slater has always denied it, but I have seen correspondence confirming that my ex-business partner was sending him money. It also appears he gave Slater an overseas holiday. I found out that documents Slater was using to try to legitimise his allegations came from files I had left in the care of my exbusiness partner.

For almost seven years, I have been seeking to clear my name and to have Slater held responsible for spreading these vicious lies. For almost seven years, Slater has succeeded in delaying, and delaying, and delaying. He claimed that if given a chance he would show the Court that all the allegations he made were true. The Court gave him chance, after chance, after chance, but he was never able to even say what his case was.

Finally, in October last year, Cameron Slater ran out of chances. He had blown his last chance and the Court refused to let him have yet another one. The Court carefully considered the case that he said he wanted to bring and found that it failed to properly answer my claim in almost every way imaginable. The Court also looked at the documents Slater had and found that they did “not provide cogent support” for the allegations.

It’s magnificent to have this decision. I think this judgment is a major vindication of everything I have been fighting for, for almost seven years. It shows that there simply was no substance to what Slater said about me on his Whale Oil site.

Unfortunately, this is not the end. Slater has appealed this decision. He has used that appeal to still further delay the final judgment. Like he did in the High Court, he is now trying to delay the proceeding before the Court of Appeal.

I am determined to see this case through to its conclusion. I believe, in light of this judgment, it is now clear that there can only be one conclusion; Cameron Slater will be held accountable for his actions.

http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1902/CIV20134045218_15022019_JUDG.pdf

http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1902/CIV20134045218_26102018_JUDG.pdf

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