Six South African defendants have reached an agreement with
- Six South African defendants have reached an out-of-court agreement in a defamation case brought by Australian mining company MRC.
- The terms of the settlement have been kept confidential.
- But the former head of the company is continuing his personal R7-million damages claim against three of the defendants.
Just over half of the claims in a long-running R14.25-million "SLAPP" defamation action brought by Australian mining interests against six South African environmentalists and social activists have been settled out of court.
The terms of the settlement agreement are confidential.
SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation and describes a legal strategy typically employed by wealthy individuals or large corporations to sue critics for huge defamation damages in order to discourage, censor, intimidate and silence them or to tie them up in lengthy and very expensive court action.
This particular action, involving a number of defamation claims in three cases, was brought by Australian mining company
The six respondents were environmental lawyers
They are alleged to have defamed the mining interests in books, interviews and presentations relating to the miners' controversial activities on the Pondoland coast at Xolobeni and at the Tormin mineral sands mine on the
Summonses in the action were served more than seven years ago, in
The case made local legal history earlier this year by being the first SLAPP suit to reach the
This week, MRC settled its claim of R1-million against Dlamini and R500,000 from Cullinan in the first case. In the second case, MSR settled claims of R250,000 each against Reddell, Davies and Cloete, while Qunya settled his R500,000 claim against Cloete. All these settlements were by agreement.
In the third case, MRC settled 13 claims against Clarke totalling R4.5-million.
However, MRC's controversial executive chairperson at the time of the alleged defamations,
Caruso is no longer associated with the mining company. He resigned from the MRC board in 2020 and was fired from his chief executive position in
Cullinan said in reaction that the partial settlement was "not exactly what I wanted, but nevertheless I'm happy".
He described the
"In my opinion, this helped to facilitate the settlement," he said. "And I hope that the fact that the MRC companies have now settled this litigation in the wake of the
"I accept that sometimes companies and their executives may believe that they are being unfairly criticised and that sometimes the critics may not have all the correct facts. However, our society is strengthened by robust public debates on issues of public interest and not by allowing wealthy corporations and individuals to bully critics into silence by abusing legal processes."
In his response, Clarke said, "Having engaged with
"Nevertheless, I respect his right to seek access to the courts for resolution. I just hope for his own sake that he doesn't procrastinate, and has the courage of his convictions to take the stand and be cross-examined when that day arrives."
MRC and Caruso were invited to comment but have not done so.
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