Truth on Trial

Update: Dec 3, 2019

Some posts on this blog were removed in July 2019 as a pre-condition to an attempted settlement of defamation charges brought in 2017 against Nimbin GoodTimes newspaper and myself, Gillian Norman, (Gi Linda) for publication in October 2016 of  "The Truth About Bhula Bhula" and for authoring blogs exposing details of an alleged Mt Burrell land-share scam.

During 2018, two applications for interlocutory injunctions by the plaintiffs failed to force removal of the blogs by Court order. Final hearing of the defamation charge was completed on Sept 6, 2019, in NSW Supreme Court. Judgement by justice Fagan is reserved.

I author posts and administer the blogs on behalf of a group of investors who lost life-savings during 2014-16 as a result of reliance on representations by the plaintiffs.

More than 20 families who invested in Bhula Bhula land-share development claim to have been defrauded of over $2.24 million during 2014-17.

I filed a defence of justification asserting that the offending article and blogs are factually correct and justified to warn potential that others have previously lost life savings in the venture.

I claim the defamation action is a malicious prosecution, known in America as a SLAPP action: a "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation," commonly used to gag free speech and legally impede justice.

In related litigation, a professional negligence claim has been brought against Mullumbimby lawyer Wroth Wall, with a hearing listed for December 9 in NSW Supreme Court.

An appeal against a Federal Court decision, 20/6/19, to place the contested property into receivership with Vincent's liquidator, Steven Staatz, will next be heard on March 15, 2020, Brisbane Federal Court of Appeal.

Fleecing the asleeple

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

By Gi Linda -

Justice is a powerful lightening-rod touching the domain of the Divine. 

Imagine being attacked by powerful Goliath, a post-human giant that spits, roars and boasts of invincibility while sharpening teeth and reddened claws! I am inspired by the young Hebrew shepherd, who, with only three small stones, a slingshot and reverence for God, felled that scoffing, iron-clad warrior, and with a single shot hit the giant smack between the eyes, then decapitated the fallen brute with its own massive sword.
 
SLAPPs -- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

It is my observation that the defamation claim against the Nimbin GoodTimes and myself is an abuse of legal process known as a “SLAPP”. In SLAPP suits, where legitimate dissent obstructs a litigant’s lust for profit, plaintiffs improperly use the courts to bulldoze private interests over public concerns by intimidation.

In 1984, George W. Pring and Penelope Canan studied "SLAPPs", “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” at the University of Denver. They found that SLAPPs undermine the right to free speech by setting up an unfair Goliath v David battle between private and public interests, in which an overwhelming threat of litigation is used maliciously to silence critics and prevent free speech on issues of public concern.

Political activists and environmental defenders, civic and social organizations and public interest groups are often “slapped” with malice to prevent them effectively exposing vested economic interests that trample pubic concerns. 

One Judge has described SLAPPs as: “suits without substantial merit, brought by private interests to stop citizens exercising political rights or punish them for having done so.”

If abuse of process to protect profits over people became normalized, the legal justice system would become the problem not the solution; a cause of injustice rather than a relief from injustice.  

In Australia, defamation law is hostile to free speech. With the exception of Korea and Australia, defamation law retains the basic principles of common law, defining defamation as publication of FALSE imputation by which a person’s reputation or profession is likely to be injured, or which may cause a person to be shunned, ridiculed or despised by others.  In most nations across the world, citizens have a legal right to publish truth, to provide accurate information and discuss honest opinions in the public interest, but not in Australia.

The protection of free speech in Australia is embodied in the Commonwealth Constitution, which, for the legitimate functioning of representative government, presumes that all citizens have the ability to freely communicate their views, but the result is likely to be malicious prosecution and intimidation by more powerful interests. Obviously, fraudsters are angered by the potentially adverse impact on their pockets resulting from publication of truth about dishonest ventures. 

Screen-media is often used as a platform to exercise freedom of speech as a last resort in a quest for justice by those who have suffered abuse. But the same screen media is obviously used to greater effect by the wealthy to protect their private privilege against public concern and outrage.

In a review of the book, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out, Brian Martin says:

“George W. Pring is a law professor and Penelope Canan a sociology professor at the University of Denver. In the early 1980s they realised that there was an epidemic of legal actions whose purpose was to intimidate citizens. These suits had little chance of success and indeed few of them succeeded in court. But they still worked for the filers, since even when they lost their cases, they scared their opponents and achieved their goals.”

The SLAPPs study shows that those filing malicious defamation claims presumed the courts would favour the private economic interests of the prosperous over the public concerns of the impecunious: 

"The idea is that because a business has money at stake, business should receive priority over civic, communal opposition.”

Research by the Political Litigation Project at the University of Denver reveals how SLAPPs are used as an effective bludgeon to traumatize and silence opponents by causing an intimidating fear of crippling costs, damages and loss of reputation. Fear alone is usually enough to force acquiescence to the litigant’s agenda of injustice. In most cases power and profit defeat truth and justice, without ever going to trial.  

When SLAPPs litigants are opposed with a full hearing to examine the veracity of their claims, only 10% successfully win their case. It doesn’t matter. Litigants protecting private greed against public interest drag out costly quarrels in the courts for many years, not motivated by the unlikely prospect of winning and claiming damages, but simply to SLAPP their opponents with punishment until they capitulate.

Besides using defamation laws to hobble opponents, SLAPPs litigants have also used the Trade Practices Act. In March 1991 Greenpeace tried to protect the breeding and calving grounds of the Southern Right Whale in Victorian waters that were targeted with seismic testing by BHP Petroleum. To stop the activists, BHP slapped Greenpeace with damages amounting to millions, but after successfully intimidating their opponents, BHP withdrew charges.  
SLAPPs are common in America, where anti-SLAPP legislation has been enacted in some states, but they’re infrequent in Australia and are mostly “LULUs”, a type of litigation dealing with "locally unwanted land uses” in which defamation charges are brought with malicious intent to silence effective environmental defenders.

The targets of SLAPP litigation are generally not professional activists or radical environmentalists. They are mostly organisers of small groups, or individuals who are seen as trouble makers because they advocate protection of their local community from private greed. A precedent was set in Helensburg in 1986, when Protection Society activists were slapped for opposing a property developer’s environmentally damaging rural rezoning plan. Donohoe and Tapsell were charged with destroying the developers’ commercial interests. 
In another case, property developers used a SLAPP against activists who opposed them on environmental protection issues at Hinchinbrook.  Over 100 people protested extensive mangrove clearing by the developers, but only one woman aged 67 was slapped, causing her great trauma and expense. As a result the activists stopped their campaign, then the developers withdrew their charges.

With a similar flourish of characteristic malice, I am targeted with costly, traumatizing litigation threatening damages of millions, as the plaintiffs flaunt the presumed supremacy of their self-endowed right to private profiteering and expect the courts, of course, to favour profits over people. This abuse of legal process is clearly intended to intimidate and also to discourage similar attempts by others to expose the land-share fraud.

Adding to the intimidation of his SLAPP, the plaintiffs have been maliciously defaming me since February 2016, by widely spreading lies that are sworn as truth in legal affidavits and published online as demeaning, scoffing insults. The irony is that the defamer then charges the defamed with defamation of the defamer!

Nimbin GoodTimes SLAPPED

In a 2018 gloating but false account of my legal demise, the plaintiffs announced success by posting online the private correspondence between their legal representative, Stone Group Lawyers and Nimbin GoodTimes. 

Michael Bachelard in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Free Speech the Loser in Australia's Defamation Bonanza”:

“Australia's punishing defamation laws have made Sydney the libel capital of the world, and people posting on Facebook and in blogs are the latest target for expensive legal action and threats. 

Defending a court action for defamation costs between $100,000 and $1.1 million. Damages can also be substantial. A WA court last year awarded the largest ever Australian payout in a defamation case brought by three people against a blogger of $700,000. 

Defamation lawyer Matt Collins, QC, said Australia's laws were now "a Frankenstein's monster" of rules and exclusions, and prevented good journalism from investigative reporters. "There are important, high-profile stories that don't get told because of the chilling effect of defamation law, and the high cost of actions”.

“Richard Ackland of the Gazette of Law and Journalism, described it as ‘a racket’.”

In their book, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out, Pring and Canan describe how environmental defenders and social justice activists can win a SLAPP suit by a process of "SLAPP-back". They explain that litigants typically respond to pubic outrage by:

- Reinterpreting litigation as defense of their reputation, not suppression of free speech.
- Devaluation and denigration of the target.
- Misuse of the law as a means of attack. 
- Intimidation and bribery.
- Cover-ups and gag clauses.

By flipping these techniques used by SLAPPs plaintiffs to inhibit public outrage, five effective steps can be taken to counter injustice:
- Interpret the action correctly as a violation of free speech.
- Validate the worth of the target.
- Disavow abuse of process in the courts as a means of imposing injustice.
- Refuse to be intimidated or bribed.
- Publicize the action.  

In cases where defendants have countered intimidating litigation this way, it’s the reputation of the plaintiff that suffers most, as with the SLAPP-back by Channel Seven against John Marsden’s defamation SLAPP-suit, that damaged his personal reputation even more than before.

Bite Back

"Speak Out -- And When You're Sued Just Bite Back”. This is the inspiring title of Brian Martin’s review of the book, “SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out”. Published in The Republican, August 1997, the review concludes:

“The frightening reality is that SLAPPs work in scaring most targets, who become less active than before… A SLAPP essentially takes a political or social issue in which the focus is on the behaviour of a company or individual and transforms it into a private legal issue in which the focus is on the behaviour of the person who spoke out. By labelling such a suit as a SLAPP, the political dimension is highlighted.” 

Goliath Corp defeated by truth and a slingshot

The book by Pring and Canan has good advice on cross-claiming against the SLAPPer with the so-called "SLAPP-back" charge of malicious prosecution. SLAPP-back empowers those who are being slapped to overcome fear by standing in their right to free speech, and the right to expose scurrilous profiteering in the public interest. 

The famous McLibel case illustrates how corporate SLAPP suits can fail when they’re seen to oppressively violate popular interests. Litigation by McDonalds against a persistent public advocacy campaigner backfired when he used all five bite-back counter-measures to generate massive support. As a result, his website, mcspotlight.org, was accessed more than 184 million times during the litigation. 

"I refuse to be muzzled!"

The best known SLAPP suit was the "mad-cow case" brought by the US National Cattlemen's Beef Association against television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, her production company and her guest, a Humane Society official, for defaming beef during an April 1996 Oprah show discussing the dangers of mad cow disease. Oprah was accused of violating "veggie-libel laws" that give foods legal rights against defamation. After the broadcast, cattle ranchers blamed Oprah for sending the beef market into a spin, claiming more than $12 million in damages. Oprah won the suit  saying, "Free speech is not only alive, it rocks...I refuse to be muzzled!"

In the defamation matter to be heard at Sydney Supreme Court beginning August 5th for seven days, the power of Goliath is the plaintiffs' assumed right to profit from sale of home-sites located on land where no habitation is permitted, and their assumed right to use the power of the courts to intimidate defrauded investors who were disenfranchised without restitution.

Even stone-slinging shepherds and defrauded investors have a natural right to speak truth, and the ability to bite-back with justice. 

mountwarningecovillagescam.blogspot.com.au

thetruthabouttruthology.blogspot.com.au

thetruthabouttruthology.blogspot.com.au/2016/12/the-truth-about-bhula-bhula.html

Reference

-  Sharon Beder, 'SLAPPs: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation', Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1995
-  George Pring and Penelope Canan, 'SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out' (1996)
-  Brian Martin, ‘Speak Out -- And When You're Sued Just Bite Back’, The Republican, August 1997
-  Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin, 'Making Censorship Backfire' (2003)
- Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin, 'Exposing and Opposing Censorship: Backfire -  Dynamics in Freedom-of-speech Struggles' (2004)
-  Fiona J L Donson, ‘Legal Intimidation: A SLAPP in the Face of Democracy’ (2000)
- Seth Goodchild, 'Media Counteractions: Restoring the Balance to Modern Libel Law’ Georgetown Law Journal 315 (1986)  
- SMH, Michael Bachelard, ‘Free Speech the Loser in Australia's Defamation Bonanza’ May 12, 2017 
http://www.smh.com.au/national/investigations/free-speech-the-loser-in-australias-defamation-bonanza-20170511-gw2cnc.html
- The McLibel Trial Story McSpotlight (2004); mcspotlight.org/case/trial/story.html  

><><><

Gi's Garden

Goliath Corp

Free Speech

The protection of free speech in Australia is embodied in the Commonwealth Constitution, which, for the legitimate functioning of representative government, presumes that citizens do have the ability to freely communicate their views.

Celebrity Don Tolman Tricked in Aussie Scam

By Gi Linda-

Celebrity sells! So, when Don Tolman flashed his famous smile in a promotional video for Nightcap Village, a notorious land-share nightmare in which I and other investors lost life-savings totaling over $2.24 million, we contacted Don Tolman's team about his star appearance, presuming he consented to use of his reputable name and famous face for advertising an alleged scam. We received no reply.

Screenshot -Nightcap promo video
Tyler Tolman and Don Tolman

It was not until I met Don Tolman in person at a Uki cafe that I discovered how, like me, he had been tricked into supporting the land-share scam.  Sitting with Don in the cafe were two locals who had also lost their investment in the Nightcap Village fiasco, and they explained how Don's son Tyler had not only used his father's fame and name to illegally sell interests in property, but had also taken control of Don's websites and product marketing.

Don Tolman told us he was tricked when he was invited to visit the Nightcap Village project in 2018. The tour was filmed, then Tyler used his father's famous face to sell home-sites without relevant permissions.  

Don was clearly distressed: "I can't believe my own son would do this..." 

Don's son, Bali-based health coach, Tyler Tolman, began promoting the land-share venture in 2016, naming his favorite spot Tolman Ridge.

 

Tyler Tolman's first promotional video for the Mt Burrell land-share venture

By 2019, Tyler Tolman was asking $320,000 for a prospective pre-DA  home-site on Tolman Ridge, and making promises in online webinars that investors would receive "legal title" to their home-site, as well as receiving "native title". The spurious native title is a contrivance involving a local Minjungbal tribe agitated by a "freeman" activist who enjoys the benefit of squatting rights with presumed aboriginal sovereignty over the property.

The failed land-share venture at Mt Burrell was first marketed in 2014-15, advertised as "ethical investment opportunities" on websites "Truthology" and "Freedom Summits," promising potential investors co-ownership of land.

In July 2015, investors' funds were used to purchase a 640 acre property at Mt Burrell, through a private company, Wollumbin Horizons, without fulfillment of promises that investors would be co-owners of the land. 

Instead, the self-appointed company director issued himself a $1 shareholding, and claimed personal ownership of the land we had paid for.

So, instead of becoming co-owners of the estate we had paid for, investors were made "unit holders" in a fake "trust" as owners of nothing. It was announced that investment moneys were now re-designated as "non-recoverable loans" or "non-returnable application fees" for membership of a proposed community called "Bhula Bhula Community Village" or "Bhula Bhula Village Community".

The venture has expanded in the last four years, with three properties now projected to be included in "Nightcap Village," offering 300 proposed dwellings and a shopping center.  Potential investors are not told that the property at 3222 Kyogle Road and the adjoining commercial precinct are contested by previous investors.

Tyler Tolman celebrates 

During 2014-17, the first condition for acceptance of investors as "community members" was unquestioning loyalty to the cultish leaders, with their unconventional fiscal practices and dubious conduct. Anyone who objected or called for accountability was violently awarded the left-boot of fellowship without return of "application fees".

During 2016-17, construction of unapproved dwellings by investors in defiance of Tweed Shire Council regulations was encouraged until investors were evicted from the property.

A false narrative, laced especially with calumny against opponents, wrongly advises potential new investors that litigation ongoing since 2017 by defrauded investors was decided in favor of the developers. Assurances that embezzled funds were returned are not true.

Don Tolman views plans for Nightcap Village

Tyler was informed in 2016 that more than twenty investors had lost life savings in the land-share venture that he promotes. He cared not a rat's ass!  

Escorting his father through the proposed site of Nightcap Village in 2018, Tyler Tolman planted an avocado  tree to stake his claim in the prospective development.

Tyler Tolman plants a tree on "Tolman Ridge"

Images of the ceremonial tree planting were included in a Nightcap Village promotional video, also published on Tyler's YouTube page, where he invites viewers to quickly grab a neighbourly home-site next to daddy Don on "Tolman Ridge," for an investment starting at only $250,000.

Marketeers of the prospective "Nightcap Village" boast in newsletters that the lure was a success! After only three weeks of using Don's famous face despite his objection, they hooked 13 new sales of home-sites, with more investors keen to stake a claim on "Tolman Ridge" next-door to the imagined dream-homes of the esteemed American celebrities.

Bali-based Tyler Tolman teaches the value of fasting under the slogan "heal thyself," but he is not a legitimate real estate agent and has no legal right to sell any interest in properties in Australia. Online advertising by an overseas unregistered agent offering land-share opportunities without development approval is cyber-fraud under Aussie law. 

Screenshot from Nightcap promo video with Tyler Tolman

In promotional videos, webinars and public meetings, where Tyler uses his father's good name to sell a bad scam, he never mentions the project controller.  

In June 2017, NightCap Village contracted with the company in an apparent phoenix move to acquire the property and divest liabilities.

On July 4, 2017, the company owning title to the land in external administration with Vincents Chartered Accountants.

On June 20, 2019, two years later, Vincent's liquidator Steven Staatz was granted receivership of the property in Brisbane Federal Court, in case QUD 32/2017, and a lien over the land with authority to sell it to the primary benefit of the lawyers and the liquidator, so leaving defrauded investors with a beneficial interest in nothing. 

A statement of claim charging land-share fraud is listed for hearing at NSW Supreme Court of Equity, Real Property List, on August 2, 2019.

An appeal from the Federal Court decision is listed for hearing on August 15, 2019. 

Meanwhile, the promotional video featuring Don Tolman has now been removed from the Nightcap village website and from Tyler Tolma's website, and neighbours report that the avocado tree planted by Tyler Tolman at Nightcap Village has met a prescient fate:

"The Avocado tree being ceremoniously planted on Tolman Ridge in the promotional video was planted in clay in the middle of a 4-wheel drive track and has been run over and destroyed." 
 

Don Tolman says he was tricked into promoting a scam by his son Tyler Tolman