Jemma Green wins $400,000 payout over articles blasting her Elon Musk guerrilla campaign and Power Ledger

Blockchain technology entreprenuer Jemma Green has been awarded $400,000 in damages for newspaper and online articles zapping her promotional work at trading platform developer Power Ledger. The articles, published in the Australian Financial Review and its web page, implied that Dr Green encouraged a rumour that American electric cars pioneer and energy storage investor Elon Musk was interested in Power Ledger. Supreme Court judge Rene Le Miere has ruled that publisher Fairfax Media and reporter Aaron Patrick pay serious damages after rejecting their truth defences over highly critical articles about Dr Green published in late December 2018. The judge also ordered Fairfax — a subsidiary of Nine Entertainment — to take down online versions of articles suggesting the former Perth deputy lord mayor had over-hyped her group’s tradeable POWR energy tokens. Justice Rene Le Miere rejected defences by Fairfax that various Twitter and Telegram posts by Dr Green in September 2017 encouraged a rumour that Mr Musk had approached or met her. The online material pointed to by Fairfax included a Tweet by Dr Green that included a photograph of her daughter Amelie wearing a t-shirt with the words “I Love Elon”. The tweet said: “Can’t wait you to meet you @elonmusk Love baby Amelie xx.” That was on the day of a launch event for Mr Musk’s battery project in South Australia. Dr Green posted photos of the Tesla billionaire speaking with captions including “yes I was at launch event last night with Elon”. She did not respond to later posts querying whether she had met Mr Musk, with Dr Green telling the Supreme Court she had hired staff to manage the volume of communications she faced. She also testified at the defamation case hearing in January this year that she was using a guerrilla marketing approach to attract Mr Musk’s attention in a bid to do business with him. Ruling in her favour, Justice Le Miere said her tweet that she was at the event with Mr Musk was “an overstatement and apt to confuse a reader into thinking that Dr Green may have met Mr Musk”. “However, the tweet made no claim that Dr Green had discussed Power Ledger with Mr Musk or that he had expressed any interest in Power Ledger,” the judge said. The judge found that an article headed ‘How to win and lose $2b’ implied that Dr Green was engaged in market manipulation with its POWR tokens. It also gave the impression that a scheme had been created to transfer wealth from investors to Dr Green. Justice Le Miere said her experience in the finance industry and her achievements, including being the deputy lord mayor, were emphasised. “Dr Green is portrayed as an opportunist making claims ... in order to obtain money from investors,” the judge said “Her scheme was not to create but to transfer wealth.” The judge rejected evidence submitted by Fairfax to back up inferences that Dr Green had caused unethical market manipulation. The evidence did not establish that Dr Green had misled the investors or the public. He found the seriousness of the defamation was increased by Mr Patrick’s successful entry in journalism awards, by later Financial Review articles, and by Fairfax’s failure to retract material found to be misleading or false. Outside court, Dr Green said she was delighted with the outcome of a case that had been an unwanted distraction from the development of Power Ledger. “We are glad this is now behind us so we can keep working on our mission to deliver clean energy for everyone,” she said.