According to court documents, Dr Nyst made a claim for damages of $175,000 and aggravated damages of $75,000 against the AIA and Ms Greenall. He alleged the AIA defamed him in a November 2018 email to its Queensland chapter members, which was signed by Ms Greenall. The email claimed “long-term negligence by the current owner” combined with the September 2018 fire, placed the building at “real risk of demolition”. It urged members to sign a petition calling on the state government to take action on the Broadway’s derelict state. The Broadway Hotel, a heritage-listed building in Woolloongabba, has been unused since 2010 after a major fire, and caught fire again in September 2018.

Dr Nyst’s court statement claimed the AIA made no contact with him about the state of the hotel before sending the email. He claimed had the AIA contacted him, they “would have known that the condition of the Broadway Hotel at that time was not in consequence of any improper conduct on the part of the plaintiff”. Dr Nyst said the email was defamatory and suggested he had failed to maintain the hotel, and he was not to be trusted with a heritage building. The email was meant to imply that Dr Nyst’s neglect of the Broadway was deliberately designed to create a need for it to be demolished, Dr Nyst claimed. He said he had been “held up to ridicule and contempt” by the email and had been injured in his personal and professional reputation in the community.

In truth, the court documents stated, Dr Nyst had purchased the Broadway around 2000 and had demonstrated a “commitment to purchasing, improving, restoring” Queensland heritage buildings in Brisbane. Dr Nyst has previously purchased and restored the Terminus Hotel (now Fox Hotel), the former Defiance Grain Mill in Constance Street in Fortitude Valley (now The Mill on Constance bar), a Gotha Street factory, and Walmar House in West End. “The plaintiff had prominence and a reputation within the architectural community and the community generally as a person with a significant and genuine interest in purchasing and restoring, for the benefit of the community, property which was part of the cultural heritage of Brisbane,” the court claim states. The court claim said Dr Nyst had devoted “considerable time, effort and resources” to restoring the Broadway Hotel before 2010. When asked to make amends over the email, Dr Nyst claimed, the AIA said the inclusion of the word “negligence” in the email was an “innocent mistake” and did not give Dr Nyst the names or details of the people the email was sent to.

The claim said Dr Nyst had no approvals since 2014 to develop or restore the Broadway as he had entered into a contract of sale that year. Dr Nyst also asked for an injunction restraining the AIA from the “further publication of the defamatory imputations outlined in the statement of claim”.