The flamboyant Windies opener, Chris Gayle was awarded A$300,000 ($220,770) in damages by an Australian court on Monday, more than a year after he won a defamation case against Fairfax Media, who accused him of a serious incident during the 2015 World Cup.
New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum made the award for articles published in January 2016 that accused Gayle of exposing himself to a masseuse during the tournament. The southpaw had previously sued Fairfax Media over a number of articles published in January 2016 across a variety of Australian news outlets which claimed that he had exposed himself to a masseuse in the West Indies’ dressing room during a training session in Sydney.
The story was soon captured by the international media as well, something Gayle presented as evidence and it was accepted by the jury who further added that Fairfax was motivated by “malice” in publishing the stories. In October last year, the final conclusion of the case was heard which clarified that the allegation Chris exposing himself was false and that Fairfax had failed to establish that the accusation Gayle had propositioned the masseuse was “substantially true”.
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Chris Gayle’s spokesman Grant Vandenberg told the media after the verdict that Gayle was “vindicated today by the judge, he’s already been vindicated by the jury”. He further added, “All he wants to do is play cricket and he’d really, really love to come back to Australia — a country that he loves as much as anywhere — and play in the Big Bash.”
Fairfax Media said last year it intended to appeal the verdict.
Describing her verdict, Justice Lucy McCallum said those imputations were serious and “went to the heart of Mr. Gayle’s professional life as a batsman”. She said, “In light of the jury’s verdict I am required to assess damages on the basis that the allegation of indecent exposure was not true and that the attribution of such conduct was very damaging to Mr. Gayle’s reputation.”
