The 27 March date in the Supreme Court of NSW didn’t play out as a typical hearing. Instead, both sides’ lawyers agreed on the next procedural steps between themselves and formalised that without needing to argue it out in court.
That’s fairly standard in litigation - dates get set, and sometimes the detail is worked through before anyone steps in front of a judge.
So, we’ve now moved into the next phase: discovery and subpoenas.
What all this actually means
For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of spending quality time with a Supreme Court procedural timeline, here’s how it works.
Discovery is the phase where each side is compelled to hand over documents relevant to the dispute - emails, internal communications, records, data.
It’s the point where the detail sits. Those documents have the potential to confirm claims, challenge narratives, and reveal what is actually going on behind the scenes.
Discovery will likely start in May and run through June, though it remains an ongoing obligation throughout the preparation for trial.
Subpoenas are formal court orders requiring third parties - people or organisations not directly involved in the case - to produce documents or give evidence. They allow relevant material to be obtained from outside the parties themselves, where it exists. We intend to use that process in a targeted way.
This stage typically runs alongside, or just after, discovery.
Interrogatories are written questions that one party can require the other to answer under oath.
Then we move onto preparing expert evidence if considered necessary, mediation, witness preparation, general trial preparation - and if it gets to trial, we’re looking at 10 to 12 days in court.
The timeline to trial is somewhere up to 18 months from now. The wheels of justice, as they say, grind slowly.
What this case is actually about
The claim is filed in the Supreme Court of NSW’s Common Law Division, Defamation List. The plaintiff is Peter V’landys (personally, not Racing NSW - large businesses can’t sue for defamation) and the defendants are The Thoroughbred Report Pty Ltd, me, and journalist Kit Gow.
The article at the centre of it is Kit’s piece from 18 November 2025: After twenty years at the helm, is it time racing imposed CEO term limits? An article covering governance norms, industry data, and the question of whether indefinite CEO tenure is still fit for purpose in NSW racing.
I can’t give you the full arguments of either side here - that’s the fun and games of a court room. What I can do is give you a plain-English read of the legal ground we’re standing on.
The statement of claim alleges eight defamatory imputations - things Mr V’landys’ legal team say a reasonable reader would take from the article. In summary: that he lacked the skills to carry out his role effectively, that he was no longer competent and ought to be replaced, that he had harmed the industry through neglect of physical infrastructure, that he was unfit to continue as CEO due to the demands of his rugby league roles, and that he was not fully committed to racing’s long-term future.
We deny the imputations, and our legal team at Wotton Kearney has filed a defence relying on four grounds.
1. Honest opinion.
The law protects the expression of opinion on matters of public interest, provided that opinion is based on proper material - that is, facts. Our position is that the article was clearly analytical and opinion-based in nature, grounded in publicly available data and documented industry trends. Opinion doesn’t have to be flattering; it has to be genuine, and grounded.
2. Justification, or truth.
Where the article made statements of fact, we say those statements were substantially true. The data cited, the governance comparisons drawn, and the observable industry trends referenced were drawn from publicly available documents.
3. Contextual truth.
This is more technical, but worth understanding. Even if a court were to find that a particular statement carried a defamatory meaning, if the broader context of the article is substantially true, the law recognises that a person’s reputation is not further damaged by it.
4. Public interest.
This is the one that matters most to me personally. Section 29A of the Defamation Act 2005 (NSW) provides a complete defence where a publication concerns an issue of public interest and the publisher reasonably believed that publishing it was in the public interest. Racing NSW is a statutory authority. It controls licensing, funding, prizemoney distribution and industry policy for tens of thousands of participants. The article was published while the NSW Government’s review of the Thoroughbred Racing Act 1996 was actively underway. The question of how that power is governed - and by whom, and for how long is a public interest question, and one the industry is yet to openly ask.
There is also a threshold question before damages come into play. Under the Act, Mr V’landys must demonstrate that the article caused, or was likely to cause, serious harm to his reputation.
Mr V’landys is entitled to bring this claim. We are entitled to defend the article. That is how the legal system is supposed to work.
However, what the system also produces, in cases of this scale, is a massive bill. Getting to trial will cost each party somewhere in the order of $1.5 million. Which makes it a fair question for the Racing NSW board to answer publicly: is this personal litigation a good use of industry funds?
Because if Racing NSW is funding it - and Mr V’landys declined to deny it when asked - that money belongs to the participants, owners, trainers and breeders reading this. And everyone deserves a straight answer.
Shout out to supporters
To everyone who donated to our GoFundMe to help defend this case - thank you. The level of support, from across the Australian industry and around the world, has been extraordinary, and it’s what has kept us in the fight.
Without it, a strategy of attrition - which is all too common in cases like this - would have worked. When the cost of defending becomes so prohibitive, defendants are forced to give in, regardless of the merits.
Your donated money has funded real legal work that has kept us at the table for this long. And it has made clear to everyone watching that there is a constituency in this industry that believes independent journalism and governance scrutiny are worth protecting.
The costs ahead are significant. A case of this scope, taken to trial, runs into seven figures. We are hoping for a more sensible resolution. But if governance sense doesn’t prevail, we will be getting ready for trial.
If you want to contribute, the GoFundMe remains open.
The bigger picture
This isn’t really about me, or about TTR, or even about one article.
It goes to whether those who scrutinise how racing is run - grounded in data and published in what we believe is the public interest - can do so without being met with the full weight of Supreme Court action. And ultimately, it goes to what kind of industry we want to be.
We’ll keep reporting. We’ll keep you updated as this progresses.
Vicky Leonard is the Managing Director of The Thoroughbred Report and co-founder of Kick Up and Kick Collective.
