JUDY DAVIS - DAVIS WINS AUSTRALIAN LIBEL SUIT

DAVIS WINS AUSTRALIAN LIBEL SUIT

LATEST: Actress JUDY DAVIS has won a libel lawsuit against an Australian newspaper after its reporters allegedly depicted the star as a child-hater.
The Australian native, best known for her role in 1984's A Passage To India, appeared at a local council meeting in 2006 to discuss the location of a sports park near her Sydney home.
She suggested the soccer park be moved to another venue to avoid local residents being hit by stray balls.
But she was outraged at the press coverage of the event, and launched legal action against Sydney paper The Daily Telegraph - accusing the publication of defamation over a series of articles which appeared in February 2006.
In one article, newspaper reporters claimed she "acted in an unreasonable and selfish manner in opposing developments at Birchgrove Oval designed to protect children from physical injury".
And at a Sydney court on Monday (02Jun08), a four-man jury decided Davis had been wrongly depicted by the newspaper's publisher News Ltd's Nationwide News.
They ruled the Oscar nominee had been the victim of defamation and that the company was "actuated by malice in publishing (the article)".
Davis will learn at a later date the amount of damages she will be awarded.