Lemon caravan defamation case hits stumbling block

A bitter defamation stoush between the administrators of rival ‘lemon’ caravan groups on Facebook has hit a series of stumbling blocks with one side falling out with her legal team.

Tracy Leigh at the Brisbane Courts precinct. File picture: AAP Image/Attila Csaszar

A long-running and bitterly fought defamation stoush between the administrators of rival Facebook groups aimed at exposing “shonky caravans” has hit a series of stumbling blocks, with one side falling out with her legal team.

In his decision handed down in the District Court in Brisbane on August 30, Judge Bernard Porter slammed plaintiff Tracy Leigh, who moderated a 50,000-strong Facebook group for owners of “lemon” caravans, for failing to articulate her newly repealed claim for defamation in an “intelligible pleading”.

Leigh is already suing Louis Philippe Sanchez, the alleged administrator of the Shonky Caravan-Builders Dealers Around Australia Facebook page (Shonky Facebook page), and co-defendant Rona Sanchez, for defamation seeking $270,000 in damages over 28 allegedly defamatory publications they allegedly made on their Facebook caravan page in 2017.

Leigh alleges the imputations of the publications are that she “is dishonest, a tax cheat, a liar” and that Leigh “was making dishonest use of her Facebook page and her advocacy activities for her own benefit”.

The Shonky Facebook page is alleged to have had over 7500 members at the time of the publications.

Leigh, who sued the Sanchez’s in March 2018, had applied to the District Court for the green light to significantly expand her defamation claim.

Leigh submitted to the court that the Sanchez’s “should face the consequences of their seven and a half years of abusive publications about me at a fairly adjudicated trial”, asking for permission replead an updated statement of claim which included pleadings for aggravated damages for “seven and a half years of” allegedly abusive online publications.

But in throwing out her application, Judge Porter said that Leigh - who was self represented since “a recent falling out” with her solicitors, and “possibly one or both of her barristers” - did not know how “extraordinarily broad” allegations for aggravated damages she had made against the Sanchez’s would be proved.

Judge Porter stated that the case could easily become “bogged down by the ambiguity of exactly what Ms Leigh was saying”.

“An issue in the application was how Ms Leigh came to be aware of these publications which occurred on a closed Facebook group page of which she was not a member,” Judge Porter said.

“When I asked her about it, she said that the individual publications came to her attention because they were sent to her by people on an ad hoc basis,” Judge Porter said.

Rona Sanchez Photo: Cade Mooney Sunshine Coast Daily

In her further amended claim which was thrown out, Leigh alleged Louis Sanchez had “renamed” the “Shonky Caravans Facebook group” on or about May 25 this year “to closely imitate the name of” Leigh’s Lemon Caravans & RVs in Aus Facebook group, and that Louis Sanchez had claimed his group was the “legitimate Lemon Caravans Facebook group”.

Judge Porter stated in his decision that this allegation was “not … relevant at all”.

Leigh was previously convicted of contempt of court in another unrelated defamation case also arising from her lemon caravan Facebook page, for breaching a judge’s publishing ban by commenting online about a caravan maker’s business.

She appealed the contempt of court ruling with an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court which was refused in November 2023.

The case against the Sanchez’s is set to return to court for a hearing set to run for two weeks from December 2 to December 13.