The Tara Moss Supreme Court battle with doctor drags on

It’s nearly four years since PS revealed former glamour model-turned-crime novelist Tara Moss had called in the lawyers, claiming a doctor’s negligence resulted in years of agonising pain, loss of work and left her using a walking stick.

Wheelchairs have become a part of life for model-turned-author Tara Moss.Credit: Instagram

As her Supreme Court legal battle drags on, according to Moss things have only gotten worse. These days, the raven-haired beauty is using a wheelchair.

On Friday, lawyers for the statuesque Canadian who so beguiled her adopted Australia, were locked behind closed doors in a high-stakes mediation session with the legal team representing her former Blue Mountains doctor Chris Coghill.

She accuses him of medical negligence after he allegedly failed to diagnose in 2016 a right labral tear which has caused her to “suffer significant ongoing hip and pelvic pain”. Coghill denies the claim.

If successful and a settlement is reached, a six-week trial planned for May will be abandoned. If not, a very public legal showdown will ensue.

Tara Moss and her walking stick, Wolfie, in 2019.

Last week, despite objections from Coghill’s lawyers, Supreme Court judge Nicholas Chen granted Moss’s lawyers leave to rely on a lengthy “late served evidentiary statement” from the author – filed nearly four months after the court’s deadline – which Chen conceded “has changed the forensic landscape somewhat”.

Moss’s statement included about 80 pages of “social media” material from the enthusiastic poster, some of which Chen said “in my respectful view, appears to be entirely benign”.

He was also unconvinced by Coghill’s lawyer’s demands for a court order granting the defence “immediate and unfettered access” to all “social media” accounts operated, or formerly operated, by Moss. They proposed a “digital forensic expert” be brought in to recover the material, including all email addresses, telephone numbers, passwords for all past and present email and online social media accounts as well as access to all her mobile, tablet and laptop devices.

“I am unpersuaded that a case has been shown to make the potentially quite onerous, and undoubtedly invasive, orders that the defendant seeks,” Chen determined.

The judge also granted Moss’s lawyers leave to rely on a statement from her manager, Lauren Miller, the daughter of the late Harry M Miller who initially signed Moss to his talent agency. Coghill’s lawyers had argued Miller’s statement, which includes details of the claimed impact Moss’s “injury” has had on her career and earning capacity, was not “expert evidence”.

‘Crazy’ Murdoch tales surpass fantasy

Four days since Vanity Fair published accounts of Shakespearean-level intrigue, power struggles with global consequences and even a bit of “Voodoo” magic on the Murdoch family barbecue, the powerful media clan has remained deafeningly silent on the matter.

However, a source close to the Murdochs in New York told PS on Friday: “It was a crazy piece ... riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods, which in some places was almost comical.”

“During dinners we had with Jerry and Rupert, Jerry wouldn’t hold back,” Jerry Hall’s friend Tom Cashin - the only named source quoted in the article - bravely tells “special correspondent” Gabriel Sherman about the most recent Mrs Murdoch’s disdain for then-US president Donald Trump, despite her husband’s ongoing support for him.

Happier times: Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch with Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall at a family lunch in Bel Air in 2019.Credit: Frank Micelotta/Fox/PictureGroup

Then there’s the account of the “disaster” aboard Lachlan Murdoch’s superyacht Sarissa in early January 2018.

“Hall was asleep in the stateroom aboard Sarissa when she bolted awake at the sound of Murdoch moaning in agony,” writes Sherman.

Hall alerted the captain who gave Murdoch a painkiller shot before sailing through the night to the nearest port, Pointe-à-Pitre, on the French island of Grande-Terre in Guadeloupe.

“But the crisis kept getting worse. Lachlan’s massive boat towered over the pier, and it was perilous to lower Murdoch in a stretcher. Once they managed to get Murdoch off the boat, they discovered the island’s hospital was closed after a recent fire. Murdoch had to spend the night on a gurney under a tent in the parking lot until James’s private jet landed with a medivac team.”

Rupert Murdoch and his third wife Wendi Deng in 2012.Credit: Bloomberg

Oh, the ignominy of it all. Murdoch was flown to California where doctors diagnosed a heart arrhythmia and broken back. The X-rays also revealed the next clanger: Murdoch had fractured vertebrae before.

Murdoch reportedly claimed that it must have been from the time his ex-wife No.3 Wendi Deng “pushed him into a piano during a fight, after which he spent weeks on the couch”.

Deng did not respond to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment.

Sherman also claims that despite Murdoch’s PR machine leaking stories he was still “in command” and working from home, in reality he was in “terrible shape” being “spoon-fed” by his wife-turned-carer Hall.

When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, Murdoch’s doctors told him he needed to take extreme precautions to protect himself. He quarantined with Hall in Bel Air without staff for months.

“Hall bought robot vacuums to clean the floors, baked sourdough bread and cooked simple meals of roast chicken, leg of lamb, and vegetarian pasta,” the magazine claims. Murdoch watched the stock market and took Zoom calls. Hall took online winemaking courses.

“Hall told friends Murdoch wanted her to do it, so he could write off $US3 million of vineyard expenses as long as she worked 500 hours a year on winemaking.”

Not long after came the divorce, by email. According to Sherman, Hall was waiting for Murdoch to meet her at their Oxfordshire estate last June when she checked her phone.

“Jerry, sadly, I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email began, according to a screenshot Sherman says he has read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do … My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.”

One of the terms of the settlement, according to Sherman, was that Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers of Succession.

Hall reportedly “told friends” she had to move everything out of the Bel Air estate within 30 days and show receipts to prove items belonged to her. According to Vanity Fair security guards watched as her children helped her pack.

“When she settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them,” Sherman claims.

Four months later Murdoch was vacationing in Barbados with a new girlfriend, former dental hygienist turned right-wing evangelist Ann Lesley Smith.

Murdoch and Hall had hosted Smith for dinner at their ranch in Carmel, California, about a year earlier. Smith was dating the ranch manager. At the time, “Hall didn’t think anything of it” when Smith told Murdoch that he and Fox News were “saving democracy”. Or when she “offered to give Murdoch a teeth cleaning”.

“She was devastated, mad, and humiliated,” Hall’s pal Cashin helpfully tells Vanity Fair, which then goes on to report that on the first day of Lent in February, Hall told friends she made an effigy of Murdoch, tied dental floss around its neck, and “burned it on the grill”.

Olsen’s last works were for his kids

In the hours before his death, John Olsen had been working on four unfinished paintings which were destined for his son, Sydney gallerist Tim, and designer daughter Louise.

The late John Olsen with son Tim and daughter Louise.

“He was intent on finishing them. Before he went off to bed, he had managed to complete all four of them and sign them, it was really quite remarkable,” Tim Olsen told PS on Thursday, having been inundated with condolence messages from across Australia and the world.

“Senator Penny Wong called me on Wednesday, apologising on behalf of Prime Minister Albanese as he was travelling. The PM wanted her to pass on his personal condolences, and offer the state funeral,” he said. “Along with Margaret Olley, I think dad is the only other artist to be given one. We’ve had messages from Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull, Barry Humphries ... it’s been very overwhelming and humbling.”

Olsen’s last moments were spent in bed surrounded by family and admiring the lake view from his Southern Highland’s property, which his son said remained his favourite spot.

Paying the Milkrun celebrities

As grocery delivery service Milkrun prepared to close its doors on Friday, the company was frantically paying outstanding invoices from the army of influencers it hired to spruik the ill-fated concept.

PS has confirmed that some are among Australia’s highest-profile social media players including Roxy Jacenko, who managed to get her outstanding invoice paid, and those of several stars she manages through her Ministry of Talent agency.

PS understands influencers were earning between $850 and $10,000 per post promoting Milkrun, depending on how many followers each account commanded and the level of “engagement” they generated.

Even Nick Kyrgios’ girlfriend Costeen Hatzi was making a nice little earner out of Milkrun, along with former Married At First Sight “star” Martha Kalifatidis.

Apparently the social media darlings started getting antsy about payment a fortnight ago when calls were not being returned and key staff started vanishing from Milkrun, for which investors have sunk a reported $86 million.

$10 lemons? Former MAFS participant Martha Kalifatidis.

However, as Jacenko pointed out to PS, the ultimate in convenience shopping business model got into trouble when “people were not going to pay $10 for a lemon that Coles and Woolies could deliver for a fraction of the price”.

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