A Sydney barrister's husband was allegedly stalked and accosted by a Nine reporter before reports on A Current Affair about the ownership of Oscar the Insta-famous cavoodle.
Video footage shown in a Federal Court defamation hearing against Nine in the shows journalist Steve Marshall waiting outside Gina Edwards and husband Ken Flavell's Kirribilli home.
Mrs Edwards is suing Nine over two TV broadcasts and two articles by A Current Affair regarding a bitter custody dispute with former friend Mark Gillespie over Oscar.
In the clip, Marshall follows Mr Flavell as he walks Oscar through the streets of North Sydney, filming the conversation on his iPhone.
"Can I ask you about the custody dispute?" Marshall asked.
"No not at the moment, it's still in the courts," Mr Flavell replied.
At the time of the footage, the couple was in the midst of a NSW Supreme Court lawsuit with Mr Gillespie. This case settled in November 2021 with Mrs Edwards and her husband getting to keep the cavoodle.
"What gives you the right to take Oscar from Mark?" the reporter asked.
"What gives you the right to walk in and ask me this in the street?" Mr Flavell shot back.
Despite repeatedly declining to comment, saying the courts would decide the matter, Mr Flavell failed to deter Marshall.
At one point in the video, the journalist bends down to question Oscar as the dog is walking along.
"Do you want to live with Ken and Gina or do you want to live with Mark?" he asked.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, Mr Flavell said he had told his wife about the encounter.
"I told her that a man had publicly harassed, stalked me and stuck a camera in my face for half an hour in Kirribilli," he told Justice Michael Wigney.
"What was her reaction to that?" Mrs Edwards' barrister Sue Chysanthou SC asked.
"Shock," he said.
Justice Wigney commented on the conduct of Marshall in the footage.
"If this was a case of an inquiry into the propriety of Mr Marshall's actions and the publication generally, then right, you could make strident submissions about how appalling that was," the judge said.
"But it's not; it's a defamation trial."
Claiming Oscar had been jointly taken care of by Mrs Edwards, Mr Flavell and Mr Gillespie as "one mummy and two daddies", the Sydney barrister says the ACA broadcasts defamed her by portraying her as a "dog-sitter" who stole Oscar from his rightful owner.
Mr Flavell said the original agreement with Mr Gillespie was that the three of them would co-parent the dog.
"I certainly never heard him refer to us as dog-sitters. He would always refer to us as mommy and pappy which we took to refer to co-parenting," he told the court.
When Mr Gillespie accepted a long-term contract working on cruise ships, Oscar was then shared between Mrs Edwards and Mr Flavell, and Mr Gillespie's relatives in the NSW Southern Highlands town of Wingello.
When access was denied, Mr Flavell said they went to barrister Thos Hodgson who informed them they had more rights to ownership over Oscar than Mr Gillespie or his relatives.
Mr Flavell said the ACA broadcasts destroyed his wife's attempts to start out in Sydney as a barrister, had made her fearful of stepping foot outside and had led to suicidal thoughts.
"She, on a number of occasions, told me she was going to fill her pockets with rocks and just walk into the harbour," he said.
During cross-examination, Nine's barrister Dauid Sibtain SC disputed Mr Flavell's earlier evidence that Oscar's Instagram account was just something "fun".
At a stall at the Sydney Dog Show, canine hair care firm Underwater Dogs offered $500 to Oscar for some modelling work, the barrister said.
"Yes, we used their products but that wasn't the reason we were doing the stall - for the $500 - and we offered to give that to Mark," Mr Flavell replied.
The hearing continues on Wednesday.
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