A little known fact: M-Net and its investigative magazine show Carte Blanche on the one hand, and Gold Reef City on the other, have quietly settled their massive defamation court case of millions of rands in February.
The full version of Naspers' integrated annual report and annual financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2012 is now available of which MultiChoice and M-Net forms part.
Besides how much CO2 emissions MultiChoice is cutting down on and other interesting nuggets which I've come across whilst reading through the massive documents the past two days, there is also the bit that M-Net and Gold Reef City have in fact buried the hatchet.
In the biggest defamation case in South African history Gold Reef City claimed R47 million from Carte Blanche and M-Net for the story that alleged that there was rusty and unsafe steel rails at Gold Reef City's theme park at the time. Judge Caroline Nicholls ruled that the Carte Blanche story that was broadcast on Sunday, 6 March 2005 was ''blatantly one-sided''.
In February last year, M-Net said it was going to appeal after the claim by Akani Egoli (Proprietary) Limited and Gold Reef City Theme Park against M-Net and Carte Blanche's production company Combined Artists, arising from an alleged defamation on the Carte Blanche programme, was upheld by judge Caroline Nicholls on 23 February last year in the High Court.
Says Naspers' latest financial report: "The judge concluded that the defendants had not taken sufficient steps to test or verify the plaintiff's version of events "so that both sides of the story can be fairly represented". The court dealt only with the liability, not with the quantum of damages. M-Net then decided to take the judgement on appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal."
"However on 21 February 2012 the parties settled the dispute on the basis that M-Net would withdraw the appeal, the plaintiffs would abandon the enforcement of the High Court judgement in their favour, and each party would pay its own legal costs."
