Where a defendant's alternative imputations are found to be permissible variants of the plaintiff's imputations under the Chakravarti/Hore-Lacy principles, those same imputations cannot simultaneously be 'additional to' the plaintiff's imputations for the purposes of a contextual truth defence under s 26 of the Defamation Act 2005. The role of the judge in assessing a contextual truth defence is limited to determining whether the contextual imputations are capable of being additional to the plaintiff's imputations; the ultimate determination is for the jury. There remains an unresolved conflict in the authorities as to whether the s 26(b) comparison requires weighing imputations against each other or examining the underlying facts establishing truth.
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