Marlia Saunders

Practice Areas

Marlia is an experienced media/entertainment, intellectual property and privacy lawyer who has extensive top-tier law firm expertise and a unique client perspective after working as a senior in-house lawyer. She has practised as a media lawyer for 18 years.

Marlia is recognised throughout the media and communication law industry as a technical expert and a skilful litigator, with an extensive knowledge of the law and an understanding of the issues faced by media clients. She is respected for the commercial outlook she brings to engaging with clients and addressing their needs.

Marlia specialises in defamation, contempt of court, suppression orders, freedom of information and court access applications, confidential information claims, prepublication advice, copyright, consumer law and privacy matters. She has acted in a large number of high profile media and intellectual property disputes; advised on sponsorship, production and licensing deals; and given prepublication advice in relation to newspaper and online articles, television programs, podcasts and marketing/advertising materials.

Marlia has been heavily involved in law reform affecting the media, including on behalf of the Australia's Right to Know coalition, the Law Council of Australia and the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom. She is regularly sought out for expert commentary on issues affecting the media and the public’s right to know and speaks at legal industry events.

Career

Marlia joined Thomson Geer as a Partner in the Media team in September 2021.

Marlia was previously the Senior Litigation Counsel at News Corp Australia for four years, and before that worked at Ashurst for 13 years where she acted for and advised most of Australia’s major media organisations, social media and streaming platforms, search engines, large corporates and government bodies.

Professional Memberships

Communications and Media Law Association - Board member

Law Council of Australia Media and Communications Committee - Member

Communications and Media Law Association (CAMLA) - Secretary

Copyright Society – Committee Member

Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand (IPSANZ)

Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Association

NSW Law Society

Work Highlights

Bruce Lehrmann defamation - Acting for Network Ten in the successful defence of a defamation claim brought by former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann. Federal Court Justice Michael Lee found Network Ten succeeded with its truth defence and that Lehrmann, on the balance of probabilities, raped his colleague Brittany Higgins in the Parliament House office of their Minister after a night of drinking. Mr Lehrmann has appealed the decision.

World-first defamation - Acting for News Corp Australia in a world-first defamation case brought by a former youth offender, Dylan Voller, in which the High Court held that media outlets are publishers of comments made by third parties on their Facebook pages.

Cardinal George Pell - Acting for News Corp Australia respondents in the Cardinal George Pell contempt of court proceedings over the publication of articles relating to his conviction on child sex abuse charges (overturned on appeal). Marlia’s evidence resulted in charges against individual journalists and editors being withdrawn by prosecutors.

Truth defence - Successfully defending the publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph in defamation proceedings brought by former sport journalist Josh Massoud. The NSW District Court found the media had made out its truth defence and proved that Mr Massoud was a bully who threatened and intimidated his work colleagues.

JSHealth Holdings - Acting for vitamin company JSHealth in Federal Court proceedings claiming copyright infringement and misleading or deceptive conduct by a competitor in social media posts and online, which resulted in the competitor taking down the posts and providing extensive undertakings to the Court.

Pre-publication advice and open justice - Acting for various media publishers in providing pre-publication advice on newspaper and website publications, podcasts and broadcasts throughout Australia; opposing applications for non-publication and suppression orders; and seeking access to court documents and evidence in the interests of open justice.