A defendant pleading contextual imputations under s 16 of the Defamation Act 1974 (NSW) must ensure that the contextual imputation is expressed with sufficient precision that the reputational injury it would cause is no more than would be caused by a fair statement of the particular facts relied on to establish its substantial truth. A defendant cannot use vague or general language in a contextual imputation to gain an advantage from the breadth of meaning while justifying the imputation by proving only conduct at the lower end of the range. The question whether s 16(2)(c) requires weighing imputation against imputation or weighing against the underlying facts was left unresolved, with Spigelman CJ and Hodgson JA taking different approaches.
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