Celebrity, credibility, and the courtroom: The Federal Court’s ruling explained

In a decision handed down on Wednesday, 22 July, Justice Elizabeth Raper ultimately found Wilson did not defame the younger star in a series of posts made on her personal Instagram account and that of her debut film, The Deb, between September 2024 and July 2025.

These posts referenced a bath MacInnes, then 25, took with international producer and financier, Amanda Ghost, then 49, after the latter experienced a medical incident brought on by the cold waters of Bondi Beach. On Wilson’s account, MacInnes complained the next day of feeling “uncomfortable” but walked it back for the sake of her career.

While Justice Raper accepted that a 23 September 2024 post could have conveyed MacInnes changed her story, she could not accept the ordinary reasonable reader would have understood there to be an “exchange” for her music career, or that she had been “paid off by a producer”.

Having brought a claim of justification, Wilson argued it was unnecessary for the court to determine one way or another whether MacInnes was the subject of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct, and so little evidence touched on this during the two-week hearing.

Nevertheless, Justice Raper said the “unusualness” of the conduct and circumstances – including that Ghost had allegedly known the risks of swimming in cold water prior to diving in – formed part of the reason why she was satisfied MacInnes did make a complaint to Wilson.

“Further, the ordinary reader would wonder about the appropriateness of the request and would have regard to the power imbalance between actor and producer. However, I do not accept that the matter would convey to the view that there was an act of ‘sexual harassment’,” the Justice said.

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“I do not accept that the assertion of someone changing their story, for which there could be innumerable reasons for why they did, determined objectively by reference to community standards, is defamatory.”

In delivering the decision in favour of Wilson, Justice Raper sifted through some of the more far-fetched claims to focus only on the complex legal issues at play: jurisdiction, the credibility of the key stars and witnesses, and – while ultimately unnecessary – serious harm.

Lawyers Weekly unpacks those issues below.

Jurisdiction critical to potential outcome

For about a decade and a half prior to the 2021 reforms, Australian states and territories were uniform under the Defamation Act 2005. This changed when Western Australia refused to adopt several changes, including core defences and legal elements, like the serious harm test.

In conversation with Lawyers Weekly, University of Sydney’s defamation law expert Professor David Rolph said uniformity has “gone backwards” and it has led to “live” issues of jurisdiction, such as it was in this matter.

“In this particular case, there was a question about whether the applicable law was the law in NSW or the law in WA. In a good 15-year period, nothing really significant would turn upon that – now, of course, because our laws over the last five years have become less uniform, those sorts of law issues are particularly live,” Rolph said.

Under West Australian law – which MacInnes argued for on the basis she lived there the “vast majority of her life” – the young actress and musician would not have had to prove her reputation suffered, or was likely to suffer, serious harm. This is a threshold under NSW law.

Justice Raper preferred NSW law, having determined it to be the jurisdiction in which the alleged harm had its closest connection. The Justice said it was “perplexing” for MacInnes to submit otherwise.

Not only did the bath incident occur in NSW, but MacInnes lived and worked in the state for the “formative period of the development of her professional reputation between 2021 and 2024”. Further, it was in NSW that she auditioned and filmed most of her scenes in The Deb.

“Not only did the relevant activity occur in NSW, but also the establishment of MacInnes’ place in the performing arts industry.

“I do not accept that the place of this activity, and what can be inferred from it as to the establishment of a professional reputation and any subsequent harm, is immaterial. It can be inferred that if any damage were to have been occasioned, it would have been done in NSW,” the Justice said.

No winner on credit

In an earlier interview with Lawyers Weekly about MacInnes’ case, Gadens intellectual property and defamation litigation specialist Marina Olsen said there was an “important distinction between something being true and being able to prove its true”.

“Often when we speak to people considering litigation, and particularly defamation litigation involving a truth defence, we emphasise that it’s all about which witnesses you can get in the box, whether those witnesses are going to be believed, and whether their evidence is supported by contemporaneous documents,” Olsen said.

Justice Raper took issue with the evidence of all three key witnesses.

While MacInnes appeared confident and self-assured in the witness box, Justice Raper said she had “a tendency to avoid answering questions directly, to ask for clarification when it was unnecessary, and to do what she could to shape a narrative that suited her”.

Most critically, MacInnes’ account of what occurred in the Bondi apartment and bath “changed in material respects numerous times”. For example, the account she gave her agent in September 2023 was materially different to the account in a declaration used for United States defamation proceedings, which concerned many of the same people.

There were also fatal inconsistencies in Ghosts’ evidence, particularly as it related to the medical incident she claimed to have suffered from.

For example, her affidavit evidence was that she and MacInnes “walked quickly back to the apartment” and MacInnes “followed” her into the bathroom. Under cross-examination, Ghost “dramatised” the account by saying MacInnes had “nearly carried” her into the bathroom.

Justice Raper said she could not determine whether the medical incident actually occurred or its severity due to the unreliability of both Ghosts’ and MacInnes’ evidence. Neither could it be determined who initiated the swim or how MacInnes ended up in the bath with her.

As for Wilson, Justice Raper acknowledged that while she maintained her composure, never raised her voice and never once became agitated – despite the tense cross-examination by leading media and defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC – she had a “propensity to exaggerate, to be suspicious, and to draw long bows from the evidence”.

Putting aside some of her more bizarre claims, Justice Raper was satisfied on Wilson’s version of events as it related to the complaint.

“The determination of whether MacInnes made a complaint to Wilson did not rest solely on whether to believe Wilson. It is my view that Wilson has established, despite her unreliability, that MacInnes complained [of feeling uncomfortable],” Justice Raper said.

Those reasons included that what happened on the beach and in the apartment “was highly unusual, such that it is inherently likely that any person would feel uncomfortable when placed in the position”.

Further, it was “inherently likely” a person would express feeling uncomfortable in the aftermath, as MacInnes did with Wilson. The contemporaneous evidence also appeared in Wilson’s favour.

The serious harm test

Given Justice Raper found there was no defamatory matter, the MacInnes case must be dismissed. However, in the event the findings as they related to the imputations were incorrect, the Federal Court justice considered whether MacInnes could have established serious harm.

In short, Justice Raper was not satisfied the assertion of someone lying or changing their story for self-interested reasons rose to the threshold of being characterised as “inherently serious” under the test.

In coming to this decision, Justice Raper considered the extent of publication: the 23 September post – the only one left in issue – attracted somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 views during the 24-hour period it was live and received approximately 1,050 “likes”.

Justice Raper was satisfied an ordinary reasonable reader “would have scrolled through the post relatively quickly and his or her reaction would have been impressionistic and fleeting”.

Rolph said the “highly ephemeral forms of social media publications, like Instagram stories,” were an interesting feature of this case, particularly findings as it relates to the meaning an ordinary, reasonable reader could likely take away.

“I think that presents some difficulty. Given the ephemeral nature of that, there’s the related question then of how these sorts of publications can cause serious harm to reputation,” he said.

There was some republication on celebrity gossip sites in the following days, and each referenced the United States defamation case, MacInnes’ statement in response, and the allegations that had previously been published in a Daily Mail article. Reference was also made by MacInnes’ team to publications on Australian news sites in the months following.

However, MacInnes submissions on republication “was a bald one without reference to authority nor any careful consideration of each of the republished articles,” Justice Raper determined.

Further, the issue of serious harm was not a “numbers game” that can be determined by the extent of there being “mass media publication”.

Justice Raper also considered fame-level, having acknowledged Wilson is a “leading, well-known Australian actor”. However, she could not accept this meant Wilson’s claims were likely to carry particular weight within the film industry, as “badly asserted” as it was by MacInnes.

Further, having examined social media posts, Justice Raper found Wilson was known for being outspoken, “but not necessarily reliable”.

At the time of the incident, and currently, Justice Raper was satisfied MacInnes was “not well-known within the music industry nor the public at large”, no matter how many witnesses spoke to her “star quality”.

On whether celebrities may face greater difficulties in proving reputation, Rolph said that while some degree of public profile may be a factor in public reputation, it is “probably not possible at this point to say that, in the sort of serious harm jurisprudence that we’ve got, celebrities face a higher standard than non-famous plaintiffs”.

Rolph added that serious harm is going to continue to be litigated “very heavily” in Australia, which reflects the experience of courtrooms in England and Wales since their Defamation Act 2013 came into effect.

“In England and Wales, there has been a huge volume of litigation about serious harm, and even there it’s not entirely settled – and I think that will also be the likely path in Australia as well,” he said.

What the appeal could look like

MacInnes filed a notice of appeal one day after Justice Raper’s decision.

The appeal has argued Justice Raper made errors in assessing the meanings conveyed in the Instagram posts and has challenged several other conclusions, including as they relate to the serious harm test.

Rolph said that, given it would have to be an appeal against a finding of the defamatory meaning, the “legally interesting” question would be whether the approach in Bazzi v Dutton or Gatto v Australian Broadcasting Corporation would be preferred by the appeal bench.

In the latter, the Victorian Court of Appeal applied the House v The King standard, a landmark case that established the strict standards used by appeal courts in reviewing a trial judge’s exercise of discretionary or evaluative judgments. Under this standard, an appeal court cannot overturn a decision simply because it disagrees with the outcome.

Instead, the court must be satisfied that the primary judge made a specific error of law or reached an unreasonable conclusion.

“That issue on appeal, given the threshold issue, is for the court to determine whether the trial judge’s findings about defamatory meaning should stand,” Rolph said.

Citation: MacInnes v Wilson [2026] FCA 957.