YouTuber wins landmark defamation stoush over product review

A YouTuber has won a David and Goliath defamation stoush with a Queensland company after he gave their product a bad review.

YouTuber Stefan Fischer who successfully fought off a defamation lawsuit against him by a lithium battery manufacturer from Mount Tamborine.

A YouTuber has won a David and Goliath defamation stoush with a Queensland company after he gave their product a bad review, with the judge criticising the credibility and reliability of the company’s owner.

In a decision handed down by District Court judge Michael Byrne KC on March 11 and published online on Thursday, he ruled that North Tamborine lithium battery business Deep Cycle Systems could not sue the YouTuber for defamation.

Judge Byrne ruled that DCS could not sue four-wheel driving YouTuber Stefan Fischer for defamation because DCS was not an excluded corporation for the purposes of the Defamation Act.

DCS sued in May last year after Mr Fisher reviewed its batteries’ suitability for off-road and camping use in two videos in 2023 alleging the reviews were defamatory, made maliciously and have cost them significant losses.

When DCS sued Mr Fischer it pleaded in its statement of claim that it was an excluded corporation as it had less than 10 employees and was not an associated entity of another company.

Paul Tomolowicz, the sole director of Deep Cycle Systems Pty Ltd.,

But after a hearing in October last year to decide the issue, Judge Byrne ruled DCS had failed to establish that it had less than 10 employees during the time it claimed Mr Fischer defamed him or that it was not an associated entity.

Judge Byrne also concluded that DCS sole director and shareholder Paul Tomolowicz’s evidence “must be approached with caution” as Mr Tomolowicz had admitted lying in dealings with Mr Fischer in his reply to the defence, and also admitted “telling untruths” or not correcting untrue statements in his affidavit and oral testimony to the court.

“Overall, I consider that Mr Tomolowicz’s testimony needs to be treated with caution before it should be accepted, unless it was uncontentious, supported by other reliable evidence or was against the interests of himself or the plaintiff,” Judge Byrne wrote.

“In his first affidavit he accepted having told untruths about the business arrangements, he says for a specific reason,” the decision states.

“It can be taken from the explanation, that he had deliberately done so. Again, whether that is the truth or not, the admission brings issues of credibility and reliability to the fore. There are other examples in his affidavit and oral testimony where he has either made admittedly untrue statements, or deliberately not corrected untrue statements, about his business affairs,” Judge Byrne wrote.

Mr Fischer claimed that Mr Tomolowicz had boasted to him that his annual turnover was $20m.

But the decision states that DCS’s sales income in 2021-22 was $4m, generating a $608,000 net profit and sales of $2.5m in 2023-2024 generating profit of $883,000.

DCS admitted in its reply to Mr Fisher’s defence that Mr Tomolowicz told Mr Fischer that DCS “had a factory in each of China and Ukraine where batteries are manufactured, but stated that it does not own any such factory”.

DCS also admitted that Mr Tomolowicz had told Mr Fischer that DCS had a 30 per cent stake in a manufacturing facility, but he agreed during evidence that this was not correct.

“When questioned about a message he sent to the defendant which asserted the plaintiff had a 30 per cent stake in a battery manufacturing business, he replied “Um – well, that’s an untrue statement, so it doesn’t exist”,” the decision states.

“I accept that there is a chance that, to some degree, Mr Tomolowicz was falsely boasting about the plaintiff, thereby creating an image of it being bigger than it was,” Judge Byrne wrote.

Mr Fischer raised $90,412 on GoFundMe to fund his legal costs of his defence.

Originally published as YouTuber wins landmark defamation stoush over product review