The Court held that a serious harm determination under s10A(3) of the Defamation Act 2005 (Vic) is a final hearing, not interlocutory, meaning the s75 Evidence Act hearsay exception does not apply. Harm caused by publications containing the same or substantially the same imputations may be aggregated across multiple social media platforms, but serious harm cannot be established by reference to publications not sued upon. On the evidence, the plaintiff established serious harm against the first defendant primarily through the ADAF Facebook publications, where sponsored posts with high engagement figures and inherently serious imputations (criminal conduct, violence, fraud) supported an inference of widespread reach to a relevant audience, but failed to establish serious harm against the second defendant due to insufficient evidence of the reach of her two publications.
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