Law Text Culture Volume 10 The Trouble With Pictures Article 7 2006 Dirty pictures: Defamation, reputation and nudity D. Rolph University of Sydney Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc Recommended Citation Rolph, D., Dirty pictures: Defamation, reputation and nudity, Law Text Culture, 10, 2005. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol10/iss1/7 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] Dirty pictures: Defamation, reputation and nudity Abstract There are many ways to damage a reputation. The most obvious way is by words, written or spoken — libel or slander. Centuries of case law, however, disclose that defamation defendants have been endlessly inventive about the means by which they damage a plaintiff’s reputation. In Falkenberg v Nationwide News Pty Ltd, a married couple in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt complained about a ‘Far Side’ cartoon published in The Daily Telegraph Mirror, which included their actual home telephone number as the relevant, fictitious one ot contact Satan. In Bishop v State of New South Wales, a schoolteacher complained about a theatrical performance by school students suggesting that he was in a sexual relationship with a colleague. In Monson v Tussauds Ltd, the plaintiff, a man against whom a verdict of ‘not proven’ had been returned in a Scottish murder trial, complained about a waxwork dummy of himself, which was on display in the ‘Chamber of Horrors’ in the famous London waxworks, Madame Tussauds, alongside convicted murderers.