Lawyer Chris Murphy tells defamation hearing that media report about him was lies

A lawyer tells a defamation hearing a gossip column portrayed him as ‘too old and too deaf’ to represent his star clients.

Lawyer Chris Murphy. Picture: Adam Yip

A prominent criminal lawyer who is suing The Daily Telegraph for defamation says it felt like he was “drowning in lies” after he read a column that suggested he was too old, too deaf, and “ravaged by age” to represent his clients, including celebrities and high-profile sportspeople.

Chris Murphy is suing the newspaper, owned by News Corp, over a column on October 10 about the breakdown of his 25-year marriage to artist Agnes Bruck by Annette Sharp, in which she allegedly portrayed him as “so ravaged by age” that he was unable to practise law.

In her opening address to the Federal Court, Mr Murphy’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, said the article conveyed five defamatory imputations, including that “the ravages of age” and its “associated deafness” had kept Mr Murphy from representing his clients during the pandemic.

Ms Chrysanthou said an ordinary, reasonable person who read the article would avoid hiring Mr Murphy because it suggested he was “past it, decrepit, and over the hill.”

“The ordinary reasonable reader of The Daily Telegraph watches Law and Order,” she said. “(They) would believe the action is in the courtroom, where the case is won or lost.”

Agnes Bruck. Picture: Instagram

John Jarratt. Picture: Glenn Hampson

Appearing in the witness box on Tuesday, Mr Murphy, who has represented a host of celebrity clients, compared the impact of Sharp’s article to having “cockroaches in my brain.”

“It was designed out of malice to hurt me,” he said. “This article struck me like lightning.”

A string of Sydney legal figures and high-profile celebrities are expected to give evidence in support of Mr Murphy’s defamation claim, including John Jarratt who was found not guilty in 2019 of sexually assaulting a then 19-year-old woman in the 1970s.

In a fiery exchange with the Telegraph’s barrister, Dauid Sibtain, Mr Murphy accused him of “trying to extract an untruth” while he was being questioned about his “profound deafness.”

“I’ve been deaf for 10 years. Someone selecting my deafness as an axe for my career made me very upset,” he said. “Nothing has kept me from representing my famous clients.”

From the witness box, Mr Murphy also alluded to an earlier defamation action that he launched against The Daily Telegraph in 2017 over a separate column published by Sharp.

“I have a history with Annette Sharpe, I think it was totally malicious,” he said.

The Daily Telegraph says the article does not convey the defamatory imputations pleaded by Mr Murphy. However, Mr Sibtain said that if that specific meaning was conveyed, then it is substantially true because Mr Murphy “has been affected by deafness in the past year that has kept him from representing his clients in court”.

Mr Sibtain also suggested that Mr Murphy was no longer the “face” of his own firm, Murphy’s Lawyers, and that he had passed the baton to managing lawyer Bryan Wrench.

“I’m the senior man. It’s my practice, 100 per cent,” Mr Murphy replied.

Ms Chrysanthou said Sharp’s use of the phrase “ravaged by age” was designed to emphasise Mr Murphy’s apparent incompetence.

“It’s not a temporary situation. A person who is ravaged is done, is destroyed, that’s what it means,” she said. “The person is off the field and they are not coming back.”

Ms Chrysanthou also cited an export report that found there had been “no significant change” in Mr Murphy’s hearing levels since 2012.

Criminal barrister Philip Boulton, SC, gave evidence that he came to the conclusion Mr Murphy was “too old to do the job” after reading the article.

News Corp is the owner of The Australian.

The hearing continues.