A logging company's attempt to sue environmentalists for campaigning against its tree-felling operations on a picturesque Australian island was branded by a judge yesterday as so vague that the environmentalists would not know how to launch a defense.
However, Victoria State Supreme Court Judge Bernard Bongiorno refused to toss out the case altogether and gave logging giant Gunns Ltd until Aug. 15 to file a fresh outline of its case.
The case pits Gunns against the Australia-based Wilderness Society, federal Senator Bob Brown of the Green Party and 18 other environmental activists Gunns accuses of disrupting logging sites in Tasmania and running a campaign to discredit it.
The company is seeking A$6.36 million (US$4.76 million) in damages.
But in a written statement posted on the court's Web site, Bongiorno said Gunns' lawyers had been so vague in a 360-page statement outlining their case that the environmentalists would unlikely be able to respond to the claims against them.
"In this case, it would be unfair to the defendants to require them to plead to this amended statement of claim," he said.
"Vague allegations on very significant matters may conceal claims which are merely speculative," he said.
Outside court, Brown accused Gunns of filing "an incoherent case."
"Just as incoherent and unintelligible [as] what they are doing to the forests," he said.
"They should be ashamed," he said.
Environmentalists, who frequently have gone to court to battle logging companies, argue Gunns' lawsuit undermines their right to free speech.
"We see this whole court case as being very dangerous for the right of ordinary people to get out there and play their part in protecting the environment," Alexander Marr, a forest campaigner for the Wilderness Society and the lead defendant in the case, said in an interview earlier this year.
"The logging industry does not accept that it's acceptable for anybody to protest against the logging industry in any form," he said.
Gunns chairman John Gay said the case would continue.
"Today's judgment by the court addresses procedural matters concerning the claims," he said in a statement. "The company has no concerns with this procedural development. The claims have not been rejected, rather suggestions have been made for some redrafting."
In a statement issued last year, the company said it was forced to act to protect the interests of shareholders, employees and contractors.
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