Howden v Truth & Sportsman Ltd

The High Court of Australia heard an appeal from the Supreme Court of New South Wales concerning a defamation action. The appellant, Allan Fraser Howden, sued the respondents, Truth and Sportsman Ltd, for publishing a newspaper article that stated he had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to imprisonment. In reality, the conviction had been quashed before the publication, and a subsequent charge related to the same events resulted in an acquittal. The respondents pleaded truth and public benefit as a defence.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the respondents' pleas of truth and public benefit, under section 7 of the Defamation Act 1912 (N.S.W.), constituted an abuse of the process of the court and should therefore be struck out. This required the court to determine if it was "perfectly clear" that the pleas could not succeed, given that the conviction, which formed the basis of the defamatory imputation, had been quashed.

The High Court, allowing the appeal, reasoned that a plea of justification must prove the truth of the entire defamatory imputation. In this case, the imputation was that the appellant was a convicted criminal who had served a sentence. The quashing of the conviction fundamentally altered the truth of this imputation, rendering it impossible to establish. The court held that proof of a conviction that had been set aside on appeal could not sustain a plea of truth. Consequently, the pleas were deemed vexatious, an abuse of process, and likely to prejudice a fair trial, necessitating their removal from the court record. The court ordered that the pleas be struck out, with leave granted to the defendants to file further pleas.