Otis Carey is back in the courtroom. Photo: Insight
This is getting very confusing. Otis Carey is suing Nationwide News, the parent company for The Daily Telegraph.
After Nathan Myers penned a sentence in Surfing Life that Carey (and many others) saw as racist, he tried to take his outrage to the courtroom. While the debate was dissected ad nauseam on Internet comment boards, Carey stayed silent, causing the already near-hysterical commenters to pull their hair out in frustration. Myers, the author of the original article, wrote an open letter to Otis on this site, then decided to pull it and write an apology for the whole thing. It all felt very forced. Otis continued to remain silent. It was kind of odd from the very beginning, though – the article in question with the allegedly racism term (which I’m not repeating here, because I’m terrified of the potential legal ramifications) in it was incredibly complimentary. “I thought his surfing and his poetic comments in my movie as part of the Se7en Signs Project were inspirational,” Myers wrote. “I sincerely regret that this could be overshadowed by some ill-chosen expressions on my part.”
Now that the dust has settled over that first shit storm, Morrison Media, who owns Surfing Life, might be hashing out a settlement with Carey.
But Carey’s not done yet. Rumor has it that this time Carey’s suing to the tune of $750,000, and this time it’s Nationwide News that’s getting the quick end of the whip. In a story called Sydney Confidential, the Daily Telegraph (which is owned by Nationwide News), a journalist quoted Myers’ original lines, the ones that needled Carey so much. That’s where they got in trouble. Carey is claiming that when those lines were reprinted, he was defamed all over again. And after the Daily Telegraph’s story blew up, it was covered in almost every major surf publication, as well as the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and even Buzzfeed.
The journalist in question, Briana Domjen, and Nationwide News are being represented by Ashurst, one of Australia’s biggest legal firms. Carey is under the wing of Sanford Legal. Last month, Nationwide News applied to dismiss the case. The court’s ruling was that Carey does have a legitimate complaint, and the case will now proceed to trial.
The story in the Daily Telegraph was similar to Nathan Myers’ original piece – it wasn’t meant to be defamatory, but contained allegedly defamatory statements, ones that Carey took offence to.
The surf community has been divided over the subject. Some side with Carey, claiming that he’s right to be so upset, while others see him as clutching at straws that might make him a few dollars. Others side with Myers, who claims he wrote a piece that was full of praise, and didn’t realize the implications of a few of his words.
Throughout all this, Carey remains silent. Not a word; not an open letter; no real explanation of what to some seems like a gross over-reaction. And while it’s clear that it might seem that way to some, it’s also clear that to Carey, this is either something worth standing up for or something worth a shitload of money. I just wish he’d tell us which one.
