CONFLICT OF LAWSContribution claim in respect of settlement of foreign libel action - defence of justification - struck outSkrine & Co (a firm) and Others v Euromoney Publications Plc and Others: QBD (Morland J): 3 November 2000The claimants were sued for libel in Malaysia as a result of remarks attributed to two of them in a magazine article. The actions were settled by the payment of sums equivalent to 2.9 million by the claimants' insurers. The claimants brought contribution proceedings in England against the publisher of the magazine, two of its editors and the author of the article; and applied to strike out parts of the defence which alleged that the criticisms made in the article of the judicial and political system in Malaysia were justified.Ian Geering QC, Adrienne Page QC, Jason Coppel and Catherine Gibaud (instructed by Stewarts) for the claimants. Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Manuel Barca, Robert Howe and Ben Jaffey (instructed by Mishcon de Reya) for the defendants.Held, granting the application in part and directing that the defence of fair comment be tried as a preliminary issue, that the allegations sought to be struck out raised issues on which no English judge should adjudicate because of both the risk to relations with a friendly Commonwealth state with whom the United Kingdom has close trading relations and the fact that an English judge had no yardstick by which he could pass an opinion on those matters; that by operation of the statutory hypothesis under the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978, the claimants were prima facie entitled to contribution; that the success of the application would not prevent the defendants having a fair trial on their alternative defence of fair comment because the matters struck out were not relevant to the defence of fair comment, which was an issue for the trial judge; that no infringement of articles 6 and/or 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998, arose because under the 1978 Act the court could only order payment by way of contribution of an amount which was just and equitable in all the circumstances, in assessing which the court could not overlook the fact that the defendants had named the claimants as the sources of the defamatory imputations, thereby exposing them to litigation in Malaysia where libel damages were higher.