Disgraced doctor Munjed Al Muderis launches Nine defamation appeal

Disgraced orthopedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis has launched an appeal to his failed defamation case against Nine and three of its journalists over a 2022 investigation into the celebrity doctor’s negligent practices.

Al Muderis’ barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, told the Full Court of the Federal Court in Sydney on Tuesday that there were myriad grounds to appeal Justice Wendy Abraham’s judgment from last year that he had prioritised fame and money over the welfare of his patients.

Sydney-based Al Muderis is internationally famous for a surgical procedure for amputees known as osseointegration, which integrates artificial limbs directly with a patient’s skeleton.

Lawyers for Al Muderis have filed hundreds of pages of material to the court, disputing a multitude of findings of fact about patients.

On Tuesday, Chrysanthou outlined a range of legal arguments to Justices David O’Callaghan, Michael Wheelahan and John Halley, arguing parts of the original Federal Court judgment by Abraham were flawed.

Chrysanthou said the “finding of negligence in the case was based on the application of the wrong standard and contrary to how the case was run”.

“The finding of negligence was not open to her honour,” Chrysanthou told the court.

Chrysanthou signalled to the court the appeal would dispute findings concerning the numerous patients who featured in the original defamation hearing, with Tuesday’s proceedings featuring the dissection of in-depth medical material including surgeries and aftercare that the appeal would rely on.

The imputation was, she said, that Al Muderis “was a callous surgeon who left patients to rot after their surgeries”.

Chrysanthou cited a patient who claimed in the Nine reports that he had lost his home, relationship and job because of his Al Muderis surgery.

Chrysanthou said material she presented at trial proving the patient’s losses had occurred before his surgery was not addressed by Abraham, who accepted that the losses followed the surgery without discussion.

The defamation action was first launched against Nine, which owns this masthead, following a joint investigation variously broadcast and published in September 2022 by 60 Minutes, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age alleging Al Muderis performed negligent surgery.

Following one of Australia’s longest-running defamation trials, Al Muderis was unsuccessful in his legal action, which was also against journalists Charlotte Grieve, Tom Steinfort and Natalie Clancy.

The court ruled that the reports were in the public interest and that the publishers had established contextual tr