Packer loses fight over 'greedy' slur

AUSTRALIA'S richest man, media tycoon Kerry Packer, has lost a lawsuit against a newspaper he said had implied he was also one of the country's greediest.

The billionaire owner of Melbourne's Crown Casino and the top-rated Nine television network sued The Sydney Morning Herald over a light-hearted article that appeared in a diary column on 16 December, 1999.

Packer's photo appeared with the caption: 'I'll have every bit of New Year's Eve, all of the new Millennium, anything that moves. And I'll have you too - Dr Kerry Packer.'

Packer, who has an honorary doctorate from the Gold Coast's Bond University, took exception to the article. His lawyer, Bruce McClintock, said the article painted Packer as a 'megalomaniac' with an 'insatiable greed for riches'.

But in a majority verdict, the jury decided the article was little more than a lighthearted joke against the man who in 1977-78 revolutionised cricket when he introduced his own one-day series.

'It is a fact of life that the rich and powerful get sent up in the media,' said Tom Blackburn for John Fairfax Publications, publisher of the Herald.

McClintock argued that Packer's powerful presence was irrelevant. He said Packer was 'entitled to be treated like an ordinary Australian'.

And in the end he was. Packer, who has a personal fortune of close to US$2.5bn (£1.60bn), was ordered to pay Fairfax's legal costs as his libel suit was dismissed.