Key points
- Two warring exes locked in a soap opera legal battle have agreed to settle their acrimonious defamation case when it returns to court.
- Constantine Arvanitis took legal action after three ex-girlfriends allegedly banded together to send a letter to his fiancee telling her to leave him.
- The court must accept the terms of the settlement before the case is officially over after the litigation was paused in May last year.
Two warring exes locked in a soap opera legal battle have agreed to settle their acrimonious defamation case when it returns to court after a year-long hiatus on Monday.
The trial between battling exes Constantine Arvanitis and Selina Holder is set to conclude after the parties reached a recent armistice over claims Holder allegedly made that Arvanitis was a sex addict, violent and a cheat.
Selina Holder and Constantine Arvanitis are fighting out a defamation battle in the courts.Credit:
The parties are expected to present County Court judge Julie Clayton with a joint statement to be read in court and agreed upon orders to end the expensive, rancorous and highly publicised litigation after the case dominated headlines over tit-for-tat claims of lying, drug use and infidelity.
The court must accept the terms of the settlement before the case is officially over after the litigation was paused in May last year.
Goldsmith Lawyers’ Barrie Goldsmith, acting for Holder, confirmed that she and Arvanitis had mutually agreed to settle the case and that there was “an intention to read a document in court” to that effect.
Goldsmith did not elaborate on the terms of the settlement.
In May last year, a packed public gallery in the County Court watched on as one of Melbourne’s most sensational defamation trials aired lurid allegations.
A banking IT consultant, Arvanitis took legal action after three ex-girlfriends allegedly banded together to send a letter to his fiancee telling her to leave him.
At the centre of the case are two documents which Arvanitis claimed defamed him.
One is a letter that Holder allegedly co-wrote telling Arvanitis’ new fiancee to leave him. The other is a separate legal document containing allegations sent by Holder to Arvanitis’ future sister-in-law.
Constantine Arvanitis.Credit: Supplied
After the relationship ended in 2015, court documents state, Arvanitis briefly dated two other women who he met on Tinder. Arvanitis claims both were “casual” relationships.
Two years later, Holder and the two other ex-girlfriends, a marketing executive and sales manager for a furniture company, allegedly hand-delivered a single-page typed letter to Arvanitis’ new partner, Melanie Thornton.
Telling her “we are the sisterhood”, court documents show the women cautioned Ms Thornton against dating Mr Arvanitis because he was “dangerous”.
Last year Holder sat in court as Arvanitis told of a vicious campaign she had allegedly waged against him since their break-up in 2015. He agreed that he has used drugs and slept with multiple women at the same time, but he denied allegations he was a sex addict or a criminal.
The case retreaded the most intimate aspects of the pair’s romance. At different times Arvanitis was asked about his drug use, to identify a picture of Holder’s vagina she had sent to another man and was forced to recount an occasion she had allegedly attacked him with a stiletto shoe.
“I know what a high heel can do to someone’s skull,” he told the court.
He wiped away tears in the stand while giving evidence as he painted a picture of a relationship that was often violent and abusive.
The case will return to court on Monday.
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