NSW: Aboriginal footballer awarded $25,000 for defamation

AAP General News (Australia)
12-03-1999
NSW: Aboriginal footballer awarded $25,000 for defamation

Aboriginal footballer WES PATTEN who was called a COON by police in an ABC documentary
has been awarded $25,000 in damages.

A New South Wales Supreme Court jury have found the State of NSW, through its two police
employees, had conveyed that Mr PATTEN by reason of being an Aborigine was likely to break
the law.

The jurors also found it conveyed that Mr PATTEN knowingly allowed his car to be driven
with a bald tyre.

But the jurors ordered the ABC to pay 90 per cent of the damages, despite Mr PATTEN
only suing the State over the documentary COP IT SWEET which aired nationally in March
1992.

In another action related to the same incident, in January 1997 the NSW Equal Opportunity
Tribunal ordered constables GLEN ROSE, TOM MOFFAT and their employer the State, to pay
$25,000 damages to Mr PATTEN for racial discrimination and vilification.

MORE RTV mss/sb/msk/jn

KEYWORD: PATTEN ( SYDNEY)

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