The Federal Court heard on Tuesday that the ABC and Mr Porter had agreed as part of mediation talks to seek a court order that 27 pages of the ABC’s 37-page defence to his claim “be permanently removed from the court file”.
The pages in question have been redacted in thepublicly-available version of the defence.
The parties also agreed the proceedings would be discontinued with no order as to legal costs. However,no formal notice of discontinuance had been filed on Tuesday,meaning the case is not officially over.
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A temporary non-publication order over the 27 pages wasmade by Justice Jayne Jagot in May,pending a pre-trial application by Mr Porter to strike out those parts of the defence and remove them from the court file.
His lawyers were seeking to rely onFederal Court rules dealing with “scandalous” and “vexatious” material,or material that is “otherwise an abuse of the process”. That application fell away when Mr Porter dropped the case.
Nine Entertainment Co,the publisher of this masthead,and News Corp have briefed a barrister,Dauid Sibtain,to fight the non-publication order and ultimately to access the unredacted defence.