This week, after 24 years in the saddle, Judge Judith Gibson of the NSW District Court, hands in her badge and waves goodbye (October 3).
It’s been a long and winding run as the foremost defamation trial judge in the State – probably the entire Wide Brown Land.
The Dizzo has posted more than 10,000 judgment on Caselaw, of which HH wrote 739, a shade under 15 percent, about half of which were in her role as the defamation list judge.
Here are some of her memorable decisions, with handy classifications for easy reference: colourful plaintiffs; dog cases; emojis; photo of mullet hairdo; sexual chronicles of a psychopath; bank of mum & dad; legal costs; and legal principles.
She’s delivered ground-breaking papers to global legal jamborees. At a media law conference in London her paper on fake news and how the press and judiciary respond to it, was the highlight of the talk-fest.
Her 2014 paper to the NSW State Legal Conference on defamation law and the internet opened peoples’ ears and eyes to the forthcoming explosion of electronic defamation cases. See: It Came from Cyberspace.
Even earlier, in 2010 she sat down with the leading oracle on media law, the Gazette of Law & Journalism, and traversed the defamation landscape as it then was: juries; interesting cases; the 2005 Defamation Act; journalistic ethics; privacy; investigative reporting; and freedom of speech.
After her time as Allens, she went to the Bar where she came under the spell of colourful plaintiffs’ defamation Svengali, the wily Clive Evatt – and thereby was exposed to a multitude of cunning forensic devices.
Evatt was on hand to celebrate her swearing-in to the court in 2001.
In an incredibly learned paper on citations made by NSW District Court judges it was revealed that Judge Gibson has been either the top citer of sources or, depending on the year, in the top five judges who like to cite.
“Gibson DCJ stands out as a heavy citer. Her Honour published close to the most judgments in each of 2007–16. Her 165 judgments published in 2014–16 represented 14.48 per cent of the Court’s published judgments in these three years. Gibson DCJ was the most frequent citer of authority in 2008, 2010 and 2012. If I consider only those judges who published at least five judgments per year, Gibson DCJ was the most frequent citer of authority in all but 2015 and 2016, in which she was the third and second most frequent citer respectively on the Court.”
In a hat-tip to HH’s copious output of judgments and learned thoughts, she’s described by Justice Michael Lee in the Lehrmann trial judgment, as “a judge highly experienced in defamation law”.
Since 1993 she has been the bulletin author for Lexis Nexis’ Australian Defamation Law & Practice, so it’s little wonder she was part of the Expert Committee to advise the NSW Department of Justice on the most recent round of “uniform” defamation law reforms.
Gibson was the 12th woman appointed to the District Court bench in NSW. It was a testosterone intense environment and five years before another woman was appointed – Deborah Sweeney on April 21, 2006; Leonie Flannery on March 20, 2007; and Helen Syme on April 14, 2009.
Thereafter, things started to pick up for female appointees to the court. Here’s Judith Gibson handling questions about gender inequality and the 2022 theme for International Women’s Day.
Judith Gibson’s time on the bench has not entirely wrapped up, as she been given an Acting Judge badge. Even so, it’s expected she’ll have more time at her Paris apartment.