West Indies cricketer Chris Gayle was awarded Australian $300,000 ($220,770) in damages for a defamation case against Fairfax Media he had won last year. The case was over an alleged incident of indecent exposure during the 2015 World Cup.
Gayle had launched defamation proceedings against Fairfax Media in 2016 over a series of articles which claimed that he had exposed himself to massage therapist Leanne Russell.
The Australian court announced the damages on Monday, more than a year after he won the case last October. New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum said those imputations were serious and “went to the heart of Mr Gayle’s professional life as a batsman”. However, she agreed with Fairfax Media’s submission that they were “not at the most serious end of the spectrum”, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Fairfax Media said last year it intended to appeal the verdict, according to Fox Sports.
The accusations were made by Fairfax Media newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times in a series of stories in January 2016. Their publication followed an uproar after Gayle attempted to flirt with an Australian presenter on live TV, asking her out for a drink and telling her: “Don’t blush, baby.”
Gayle had followed it up with a defamation suit and a A NSW Supreme Court jury ruled in Gayle’s favour in October last year, finding Fairfax was motivated by malice. His teammate Dwayne Smith, who was in the changing room at the time, also denied the incident took place.
