Australian Consolidated Press Ltd v Patton

Australian Consolidated Press Ltd (ACP) appealed to the New South Wales Court of Appeal against a judgment of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The dispute concerned an article published by ACP in *The Bulletin* magazine, which the respondent, Mr. Patton, alleged was defamatory. Mr. Patton, a former police officer, claimed the article, by imputing that he had been guilty of serious misconduct and had been dismissed from the police force for that reason, had injured his reputation.

The Court of Appeal was required to determine whether the article was capable of bearing a defamatory meaning as alleged by Mr. Patton. Specifically, the court had to consider whether the ordinary reasonable reader of *The Bulletin* would have understood the article to mean that Mr. Patton had been dismissed from the police force due to misconduct, and if so, whether such an imputation was defamatory. The court also considered the defence of justification raised by ACP.

The Court of Appeal, comprising Kirby P, Samuels JA, and Meagher JA, found that the article, when read as a whole, did not convey the imputation that Mr. Patton had been dismissed from the police force for misconduct. While acknowledging that the article contained material that could be interpreted as critical of Mr. Patton's actions, the court held that it did not go so far as to suggest a dismissal for cause. The legal principle applied was that a publication is only defamatory if it lowers the plaintiff in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally, and the court found that the ordinary reader would not have understood the article to carry such a defamatory imputation. The appeal was allowed, and the judgment in favour of Mr. Patton was set aside.