Jackson & Ors v ACP Publishing Pty Ltd

Jackson & Ors v ACP Publishing Pty Ltd is a defamation case in the Supreme Court of Western Australia. The plaintiffs, leaders of a religious sect known as the Exclusive Brethren, sued the defendants, publishers of Woman's Day magazine and The West Australian newspaper, over articles critical of their activities and behavior. The defendants denied the defamatory imputations and, alternatively, pleaded justification and Polly Peck defences. The plaintiffs sought to strike out the Polly Peck defences on the grounds that they were too wide and irrelevant to the specific allegations of cruelty, discrimination, and indifference towards disabled people and their parents.

The court held that the defendants were not entitled to plead Polly Peck defences that were substantially different from the imputations pleaded by the plaintiffs. The court found that the defendants' Polly Peck defences were too wide and sought to justify meanings that were not sufficiently close to the meanings complained of by the plaintiffs. The court granted the applications to strike out the Polly Peck defences and held that the defendants should not be allowed to raise and justify a meaning substantially different from, or more injurious than, the meanings alleged by the plaintiffs. The court's decision was based on general considerations of fairness and the principle that the wider meanings contained in the Polly Peck defence were not meanings which would be fairly open to the tribunal of fact on the plaintiffs' pleaded case.