Is a defendant required to acknowledge that they have defamed a person simply because they have made an error in description?

I do not see in any of the principles that have developed in this area of the law, however, that defendants are required to acknowledge that they have defamed a person simply because they have made an error in description, where the description bears a lesser (or no greater) “sting” than the “facts” for which the plaintiff is answerable. The case law limits the ambit of justification to the very thing described, such that it is no answer to say that while a person did not deserve to be described in a particular way, other events will show that he is just that sort of person. Nor can an isolated incident be the foundation of a general allegation as to conduct. But it seems to me that if, for instance, in Weaver v. Lloyd (supra paragraph 38) the allegations were reversed (i.e. if the allegation were that the horse was beaten about its body, when in fact the plaintiff had “merely” put its eye out) it could not credibly have been asserted that the defendants having failed to prove the specific charge (beating the horse bodily) would thereby be stuck with an admission of liability (to which putting the horse’s eye out could only be advanced in mitigation). If that were so, one would run the same technical risk by understating something defamatory as by exaggerating it. (I say “technical” because this is to largely ignore the practical effect of nominal damages.) The plaintiff asserts that the law has in fact become that artificial. Moreover, he submits that there is nothing to be done about it in this court, which is bound to apply the law in this manner.