Broadcaster Alan Jones has been accused of launching an "extraordinary attack" on a successful Queensland family in what their lawyer describes as a defamation case like no other.
The Wagner family is suing Jones and Harbour Radio over 32 broadcasts aired between October 2014 and August 2015.
In his opening address to the Supreme Court in Brisbane, the Wagners' lawyer Tom Blackburn said Jones defamed the family by saying the brothers were responsible for 12 deaths in the 2011 Grantham floods when a quarry wall collapsed.
"The Wagners were the subject of an extraordinary, serious attack by perhaps the best known and most influential radio broadcaster in the country, Alan Jones," Mr Blackburn said.
The court heard the Grantham Floods Commission of Inquiry in 2015 exonerated the Wagner family over the deadly 2011 floods.
Jones also told his listeners Toowoomba's Wellcamp Airport had been approved by corruption and alleged the Wagners knew only two things: self interest and greed, the court heard.
Mr Blackburn told the court Jones said the plaintiffs had stolen airspace from the Federal Government.
He told the court Jones also accused his clients of being "cruel, selfish and lawless people who pursue their goals through corruption, cronyism, intimidation and criminality".
"There is no truth at all in any of these allegations and they are allegations of the most serious kind," Mr Blackburn said.
Mr Blackburn said the Wagner family started out in the quarry business in 1989 before becoming recognised as one of the most successful businesses in the state.
He told Justice Peter Flanagan this was a defamation case like no other due to the volume of allegations.
"The damages in our submission must be very large indeed because ... they constitute a defamation that is unparalleled as far as we are aware in this country," he said.
"Reckless in their baselessness and repetition, vicious in their accusations and highly irresponsible as journalists."
Outside court, Jones laughed off suggestions it would be hard for him not to comment about the case.
"I've got no comment to make — I normally do have a view but I've been told by my people to say nothing, so this day I'm doing as I'm told," he said.
The trial is being heard in front of only a judge and is expected to run for several weeks.
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