A defendant's failure to apologise in defamation proceedings is relevant to, and capable of being a component of, general compensatory damages, independently of any claim for aggravated compensatory damages. The passage in Carson v John Fairfax & Sons Ltd at 66 is confined to the context of aggravated damages and does not preclude reliance on failure to apologise in the assessment of general compensatory damages. Plaintiffs may administer interrogatories directed to whether the defendant has apologised, as this goes to a relevant issue.
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