Court sets timetable for submissions after evidence closes
The defendants closed their evidence this morning, 6 July, ten minutes after the Court day began, meaning the evidentiary phase in biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s trial in relation to a defamatory 1995 Four Corners broadcast is now complete.
Indications from counsel for the defendants during the course of the trial that the program’s guest reporter, Reverend David Millikan, or the program’s executive producer, Ian Carroll, might be called to the witness box did not come to pass.
There were no witnesses called yesterday and the Court spent most of the day listening to audio recordings of conversations between Reverend Millikan, Mr Griffith and others which occurred in late January and February 1995, several months before the Four Corners program went to air in April that year.
After lunch yesterday, the defendants tendered a bundle of documents, most of which were admitted into evidence without objection or limitation.
After 30 hearing days, the evidence in the case is now closed. Justice David Kirby set a timetable for the filing of written submissions through August and September and the taking of oral submissions in December. Judgment in the matter is not expected until next year.
