THE HIGH COURT at Auckland has delivered a swift and stern message to violent internet trolls, with a landmark judgement against an aggrieved ex-employee who targeted one of the NZ car industry’s most prominent families with years of vile abuse.
Two years ago Craig Mason (real name Roman Mason Williams) was let go by Auckland car firm Giltrap Audi, but rather than go quietly Mason vowed revenge, and what followed was a lengthy campaign of harassment against not just his ex-employer, but anyone associated with them – and that included car wholesaler Marc Spring.
At first Mason targeted Spring with a barrage of “out of the blue” text messages calling him every derogatory term imaginable. Then Mason went nuclear on social media with one vile accusation after another which he made a point of promoting and circulating to those in the car industry where Spring does his business through his social media accounts.
In this defamation case, Spring was awarded $170,000 plus costs. Spring says “I doubt I will see much from Mason in terms of the financial award made in my favour, but the declaration the High Court gave me was the most important part”. “Mason seems to have thought he could continue posting vile, malicious images of people using his Instagram account, and other social media accounts with some pretty disgusting words to accompany the photos”
“I would have people routinely calling me, from friends, and colleagues in the car industry informing me of the latest posts, with some idiots even asking if what Mason was saying was true. In an industry where reputation is everything, this sort of nonsense can really hurt, and it really has….“ Spring said.
Spring says “some of the material Mason was spewing in his online rants can only have come from his ex father in law Ralph Norris, as the comments Mason was making are the same stories I believe Ralph Norris spread about me after I won my case against my ex wife in the High Court, Court of Appeal, and then ultimately in the Family Court, where once again I was self represented” Spring also laughs and says “I made a Court of Appeal precedent in obtaining costs as a lay litigant in that case”
Whilst Spring is not the only person who Mason targeted, it was Spring who had the legal mind, and knowledge to get the defamation case into court. Spring says “Craig Mason, or Roman Williams had every opportunity to present his side of the story and to supply evidence he had to back up his wild malicious claims and defamatory allegations” “What was one of the more bizarre elements of Masons truly irrational behaviour was his emails to the High Court Registrars saying he would be calling 150 plus witnesses, whilst again making some of the most revolting allegations about me to the High Court staff”
Eventually, Spring had had a gutsful, and fresh off the back of his successful defamation claim against the publisher and author of the book Whaleoil, he decided enough was enough and it was time to shut down “Auckland’s worst internet troll’” once and for all.
“At this point we – myself and the Giltraps – had (separately) tried all reasonable steps to curtail Craig Mason which included using the NZ Police. This guy would not listen to reason and as time marched on it appeared he was becoming more and more unhinged. “ said Spring, who revealed in one post there was an image depicting someone who’d taken a blow to the head with a baseball bat which depicted someone being killed.
“I knew it was time to act – so act I did…… and decisivly”. Spring decided to file papers in the High Court at Auckland for defamation in what on the surface appeared an open and shut case.
Mason’s response was bordering on being farcical, as he sought to have the case thrown out on the basis everything he had said in both text messages and on social media was in fact true.
At one point he informed the court he would be calling witnesses to corroborate his claims that Spring was among other things ‘a bitch’, and a ‘sex offender’.
But in the end it was all talk, with Mason failing to front at court to defend his actions – a decision which would end up costing him $170,000, which was the amount of damages awarded to Spring by the Judge hearing the case.
“This judgment serves as a warning to anyone who thinks they have the right to say what they like about others. Craig Mason spent years spreading his poison. Now he can spend years paying the price.”
And it will probably take years for Mason to make good as he is currently unemployed – or more the case ‘unemployable’, as Spring puts it.
Add to that, the fact Mason is now facing a charge of threatening to kill using the internet, so the future is not looking bright for the disgraced former car salesman whose campaign of revenge has cost him almost everything he once held dear.
