(New South Wales) Discussing the provisions of the NSW Defamation Act 1974 section 16, Hunt J said: ‘It is, in my view, basic to the scheme of section 16 that both of the imputations in question (that is, the imputation pleaded by the plaintiff and the contextual imputation pleaded by the defendant) must be conveyed by the matter complained of at the same time and that each must differ in substance from the other.’ As to an allegation suggesting suspicion of criminal conduct, he said: ‘An easy example is the publication which describes the plaintiff (falsely) with having been charged with a criminal offence and which, by reason of additional material, also imputes (truly) that he is guilty of such offence. If the plaintiff sued and complained only of the imputation conveyed by the assertion that he had been charged with that offence, it would be open to the defendant, in accordance with s 16, to plead the contextual imputation that the plaintiff was in fact guilty of such an offence and that such contextual imputation was substantially true . . [T]he defendant would succeed in the action complaining of the publication of the imputation pleaded by the plaintiff (and based upon the untrue assertion that he had been charged) if the jury were satisfied that, by reason of the substantial truth of the defendant’s contextual imputation, the untrue imputation pleaded by the plaintiff did not further injure his reputation.
In coming to that decision, the jury would be required to weigh or to measure the relative worth or value of the several imputations pleaded by both the plaintiff and the defendant. There is little doubt that in this example the jury would find that, by reason of the substantial truth of the contextual imputation pleaded by the defendant, that pleaded by the plaintiff did not further injure his reputation.
At the other end of the scale is the publication which describes the plaintiff (falsely) as a blackmailer and (truly) as having unlawfully remained in the country on an expired visa. If the plaintiff sued and complained only of the assertion that he was a blackmailer, a defence of contextual truth based upon the imputation that the plaintiff was an illegal immigrant would be doomed to failure. It would, in my view, be open to the trial judge in such circumstances to take such a defence away from the jury because there would be no rational basis upon which the jury could find in favour of the defendant.
In between these two extremes there must, of course, be many degrees. If the publication described the plaintiff (falsely) as a share swindler and (truly) as a rapist, the jury could well have considerable difficulty in weighing or measuring the relative worth or value of the two imputations conveyed. In those circumstances, it seems that the trial judge would be obliged to leave the issue to the jury.’
Judges:
Hunt J
Citations:
[1981] 1 NSWLR 36
Jurisdiction:
Australia
Cited by:
Cited – Chase v Newsgroup Newspapers Ltd CA 3-Dec-2002
The defendant appealed against a striking out of part of its defence to the claim of defamation, pleading justification.
Held: The Human Rights Convention had not itself changed the conditions for a plea of justification based upon reasonable . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 04 May 2022; Ref: scu.424108