AMBER MELVILLE-BROWN SEES REFORM AT LAST IN DEFAMATION LAW AFTER CENTURIES OF LITTLE CHANGE, AND POINTS OF FUTURE TRENDS'Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire: when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again.'Socrates' words have spanned centuries.

And indeed, in Shakespeare's age, a man would rather die to preserve his honour than to lose his good name.

But do those words still ring true today?Although an aggrieved party may not now come to blows with his rival to defend his honour, he may well feel that he is doing so when his opponent is being attacked in the witness box by the likes of George Carman QC.Actions to prevent the false sullying of a man's reputation or to compensate him once this has been done, have occupied the courts for centuries.

The laws governing defamation have been extended, clarified and developed over the 19th and 20th centuries from early common law principles, through the Libel Act 1843, the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888, the Slander of Women Act 1891, to the Defamation Act 1952.

The changes over 150 years have not been great, particularly when how a man is perceived by his fellows can change dramatically with the mores and standards adopted by various generations.However, for a legal system as slow-moving as the British, there has been a veritable flurry of events over recent years which has changed the law and practice of defamation.

Substantive changes have been made by the introduction of the Defamation Act 1996 and procedural and ideological changes under Lord Woolf's reforms.

The public's and the courts' perception of the press and the right to freedom of expression had a shake-up in the 1999 House of Lords case of Reynolds and by virtue of the forthcoming implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998.

These matters, combined with a curb on damages, have had a significant impact on modern defamation proceedings.

Libel courts are no longer the claimant-friendly, newspaper-hating institutions, handing out huge libel awards after years of costly wrangling, that they were, or at least were perceived to be.The question of damages was perhaps the first substantive and significant trend towards change.

'London is the libel capital of the world' persist articles on defamation.

Claimants from around the world come to the UK to sue for what they anticipate will be the glistening prize of huge damages awarded by juries, seemingly on a whim.Before recent changes, libel damages were 'at large' -- in other words, they were not capped.

And large they were.

In 1989 Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, was awarded £600,000 against the magazine Private Eye.

In the same year, an award of £1.5 million was made to Lord Aldington against Count Tolstoy over allegations that he was a war criminal.

The European Court of Human Rights found that this award effectively breached Tolstoy's right to freedom of expression under article 10 of the Convention.The first step towards reducing these awards came in the form of section 8 of the 1990 Courts and Legal Services Act.

This extended the Court of Appeal's existing power to impose a less excessive award where the jury damages were 'disproportionate'.

For example, awards of £250,000 had been made in 1991 to the television presenter and Childline chairman Esther Rantzen against The People and £350,000 to the pop star Elton John in 1993 against the Sunday Mirror.

On appeal under this section, Ms Rantzen's award was reduced to £110,000 and Elton John's to £75,000.The section has an equally useful persuasive effect.

The footballer Graeme Souness had been awarded £750,000 by a jury against The People over an allegation that he was a tight-fisted 'dirty rat'.

Showing himself not to be that tight-fisted, he accepted £100,000 before the newspaper's appeal.Mr and Mrs Walker and their company -- Walker Walker & Wingsail, which had been awarded the sum of £1,485,000 between them against Yachting World in 1994, also accepted the significantly smaller sum of £160,000 shortly before the appeal took place.Another significant change to damages awards was made by the Court of Appeal in the case of Elton John.

Finding that it was 'offensive to public opinion' for damages to be greater than those awarded to a 'helpless cripple or insensate vegetable', the court set down guidelines for the payment of damages which included that juries could be referred to awards made in personal injury cases -- the top end of which is approximately £150,000 -- and to brackets of damages by the two opposing counsel and by the judge.But juries remain capricious.

Only last week in the High Court in Leeds, jurors awarded £400,000 to a man wrongly accused of rape.

It remains to be seen if this award will be appealed and if so, whether the Court of Appeal will consider it to be excessive or disproportionate.Proportionality is the new buzzword after Woolf, changing the way in which lawyers litigate.

Defamation practitioners have, along with their colleagues in all areas of civil law, had to rethink practice and procedure under the new Civil Procedure Rules (CPR).

The defamation pre-action protocol will help the practitioner.

A draft has been prepared for consideration and ratification by the Lord Chancellor later this month.Mirroring Lord Irvine's stated aim of the protocol for personal injury cases, the defamation protocol sets out a 'code of good conduct which parties should follow when litigation is being considered'.

It proposes the timely and fulsome disclosure of one's case at the outset including, most notably, the letter of claim and any response.

Gone are the days of the old-style letter before action -- 'apologise and pay up, or else'.

An early exchange of information is envisaged, backed up by documents if available, and a clearly set out explanation of the reason why the proposed claimant is offended by the publication, how it is untrue and in what way it is damaging.

The proposed defendant is similarly under an obligation to reply in full to the claim made, setting out what parts of the claim, if any, are accepted and the reason why, if they are not, they are not.The introduction of the pre-action protocol will coincide with the implementation of the remainder of the 1996 Defamation Act at the end of February.

Practitioners had for some time bemoaned the need for reform of the laws of defamation and some were disappointed when the Act did not go as far as it might have.

For example, it did not remove from the jury the ability to decide damages, although the anomalous awards made have been somewhat alleviated by various other changes in the law.

Neither did the 1996 Act deal with the question of legal aid for parties to defamation proceedings, which many believed unfairly discriminated against impecunious defamation defen dants whose free speech could be fettered for want of the funds to defend their ability to publish what they believed to be true.

However, lawyers may now act for claimants -- and defendants -- in defamation proceedings on a conditional fee basis, calling in their fees only if they are successful.

Whether solicitors and barristers will take on cases on this basis is likely to depend very much on a thorough appraisal of the case at an early stage and an analysis of the likely prospects of success and value of the claim.The 1996 Act did make significant changes to the law.

The limitation period was reduced from the lengthy period of three years to just one year.

This fits nicely with the CPR's intention to progress cases as quickly as possible.

It works from an evidential point of view so that journalists' notebooks are not lost and memories do not have time to fade significantly, and it appears sensible when the claimant wishes to have his reputation restored as soon as possible after publication to limit the damage done.Another notable change was the introduction of the innocent dissemination defence under section 1 of the Act.

Parties with only secondary responsibility for the publication of defamatory material, such as magazine distributors and Internet service providers, may avail themselves of this practical defence.

Provided they are not the author, editor or publisher of the allegation and are 'innocent', they remain free from liability.

It would not protect such a party who deliberately published the material.The additional radical change -- involving offer to make amends (sections 2-4) - comes into force on 28 February 2000.

Again fitting snugly with Lord Woolf's intention to keep cases out of the courts, these sections enable parties to resolve claims quickly and cheaply.

Where it is clear that the publisher has, for example, made a mistake, he may make a written offer to the claimant at any time before the defence is served.

This is attractive to the defendant because if accepted, the matter will be dealt with speedily and may hit him less hard in the pocket.

The claimant, provided he is genuinely aggrieved and does not see a libel action as a way of making a quick buck, might be only too happy to have an apology published within a matter of weeks or months, rather than years.

A defendant may be able to 'persuade' a claimant into accepting his offer since if he does not, and the matter proceeds to trial, the claimant must prove that the publisher libelled him deliberately.The 28 February 2000 date will also see implementation of the summary procedure set out in sections 8 to 10 of the 1996 act.

Judges are to have power to decide some cases without a jury, both in terms of liability and damages.

If the claimant has no prospects of success, the judge can dismiss the claim.

Conversely, if he decides that a defendant has no real prospects of successfully defending the case, he can award damages up to a ceiling of £10,000, a declaration that the publication was false and defamatory, an injunction preventing further publication and order the publication of an apology and correction.

The powers given under these sections may lead to cases of relatively small monetary value being quickly disposed of.

However, by providing for them to be tried by a judge alone is to go against the long established principle that where one's reputation is at stake, one should be tried by one's peers.But in addition to those relatively recent changes is the fundamental change in the way in which the public and the courts view defamation and the two rights of privacy and freedom of expression (embodied in articles 8 and 10 respectively of the European Convention).

These are fundamental to defamation and must be balanced by the courts.

Human rights is not a new concept.

British courts have often been asked to weigh an individual's right to privacy and his reputation against the wider right of freedom of expression, most notably in cases brought by politicians and public figures against newspapers who argued that their articles were published in the public interest.In the House of Lords case of Reynolds v Times Newspapers last year, the court considered these two rights.

Their decision and its effect is perhaps the most significant and far reaching of the recent changes in the law of defamation.

The judgment made it clear that, while an individual retains his right to reputation, the duty of the press to publish matters of serious public interest may on occasion outweigh the contrasting right of the claimant.So where does that leave the law of defamation of today? The possibility of conditional fees and summary procedure mean that libel is no longer just a game for the rich.

Curbs on damages have started a trend to reduce awards, at least to some extent from the excessive awards of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Practice is speeded up and clarified by summary procedure, offer to make amends and the pre-action protocol.

And notably, the press has been given some comfort by the House of Lords that over time should unfreeze the free speech, previously chilled by the formerly restrictive libel laws in the UK.

So free speech rather than reputation might prove to be the 'richest jewel' today.THE USE OF CONDITIONAL FEES IN DEFAMATION CASES HAS SPLIT PRACTITIONERS, WRITES JON ROBINSLast year, retired London businessman David Pooley received a handsome award, a full apology, plus costs for a libel committed eight years ago.

The allegation by an employer -- that he had taken a bribe during the course of his work -- blighted an otherwise exemplary 10-year career in the City.Today, Mr Pooley is £40,000 richer and, more importantly, his reputation is intact.

However, the case stalled for three years because -- unsurprisingly -- he could not afford to fight it.

It was an illustration of the widely-held belief that the defamation laws, without the availability of legal aid, operate in favour of the rich and powerful and at the expense of everyone else.Mr Pooley was able finally to clear his name because of the introduction of conditional fee agreements (CFAs).

Nigel Tait, a partner at the redoubtable London defamation specialist firm Peter Carter Ruck & Partners, believes that 'no win, no fee' could go some way to redressing the much-criticised imbalance.

He says the firm has been 'delighted' to have cleared the names of people who have no money at all and whose actions would otherwise have been dropped.

To date, the firm has run more than 50 cases on CFAs and is the only firm to offer an all-inclusive 'no win, no fee' scheme backed by insurers Legal Protection and Saturn.While libel lawyers might not be rushing to embrace the brave new world of CFAs, nonetheless the public is keen.

Carter Ruck takes up one in ten requests to run cases on CFAs.

The firm won the first defamation trial to be run on a CFA last year.

Luisa Morelli and Vincent Coyle successfully sued The Sunday Times after it wrongly alleged that they made a bogus compensation claim following a nightmare holiday.At first glance, no win, no fee might seem pain-free for clients, but for Mr Morelli and Mr Coyle the d ecision to pursue the case was agony.

They could not afford the premium for after-the-event insurance (£15,000 for £100,000 of cover) to cover their costs in the event of losing the case.

If they lost, they risked financial ruin, Mr Tait says bluntly.

'I wouldn't have liked to have to made that decision.

But I think I would have gone for it.'The courage of their convictions paid off, and they were awarded £45,000 in costs between them.

The case could have settled for as little as £5,000, Mr Tait says, as all they wanted was a decent apology.

The solicitors did not even charge the client a success fee (the sum a solicitor can add to their fees in return for running the risk of a CFA) but -- he says somewhat ruefully -- it was early days then.No doubt the cost of insurance is holding back the CFA libel market.

The current premium for the Carter Ruck scheme is within the 'reasonable' range of between 10% and 15%.

But one solicitor reports that he was quoted a premium of between 30% and 40%.London firm David Price & Co is another of the few firms running CFAs for defamation actions in large volumes.

Sole principal David Price, a solicitor-advocate, has done more than 40 cases, settling them all favourably.

Clients might be put off by large premiums, but he notes that it is only a temporary hitch because they will be recoverable, through secondary legislation under the Access to Justice Act 1999, from April.

Only policies dated after April will be recoverable.The major issue for Mr Price is the potential conflict between client and lawyer.

At the start of every case, he says that the client must know what the bottom line is.

If you have a client who wants £100,000 for a libel that is only worth £10,000, then inevitably there is conflict.

Lawyers must be clear with their clients from day one, he says.

As every libel lawyer knows, you can never second guess a jury.

But there is also something about defamation that attracts people who, he says carefully, can be difficult customers with 'unrealistic expectations'.That aside, he says that he is 'entrepreneurial enough' to know when a case is worth taking on and can turn the cases around quickly.

The 40 cases -- including some that Peter Carter Ruck & Partners has turned down -- have been done with the help of two assistant solicitors and three paralegals.

Mr Price says he is happy to leave the future of libel cases to the market: 'For those cases which are strong enough, there'll be lawyers that are expert enough in their field to recognise them as money-making ventures.'But not everyone is so enthusiastic.

One senior libel lawyer -- reluctant to go on the record because colleagues at her firm use CFAs in other areas -- admits to a 'fundamental' problem with the ethics of bank-rolling clients.

She maintains that defamation actions can change beyond recognition as they run their course.

That can put the solicitor in the unenviable position of cutting his client adrift when the case has changed -- albeit, through no fault of the client -- or keep on funding the action.Roderick Dadak, head of defamation at specialist media firm Lewis Silkin is also cautious because of the capricious nature of juries.

Also, the motivation for many actions is the vindication of a reputation with many cases being resolved with awards of no more than £10,000.

'So where are your profits going to come from?' he asks.

However, he expects an increasing use of CFAs.

'I don't think there are many lawyers who can afford not to,' he reckons.Philip Conway, a partner at London media firm Davenport Lyons, says CFAs are 'still unchartered waters' which do not form part of his firm's strategy.

Concerns include the lack of insurance and the possibility of costs orders being made against solicitors.Rupert Gray, head of the media department at Crockers Oswald Hickson and Neil Hamilton's solicitor in his recent battle with Mohammed Al-Fayed, is another sceptic.

Many times a case will go so far he says, and then 'a skeleton falls out of the cupboard' changing the nature of the case beyond recognition.

'Straight' no win, no fee arrangements do not work for libel, he argues.

But arrangements which genuinely share the risks with clients by, for example, having one rate if the client wins and another if they lose are much more attractive.

However, the validity of such arrangements was throw up in the air by last year by the Court of Appeal in Geraghty v Awwad in November, which threw into doubt the validity of contingency fee agreements.

In Mr Gray's opinion Geraghty only applies to agreements entered into prior either to a change in Law Society regulations, published last January, or more arguably the original decision in Thai Trading, allowing a form of contingency fee.

That decision changed the common law, he says, adding that it 'presumably' reflected a change in public policy.Whatever the reservations from the profession, Mr Tait remains convinced of the ability of CFAs to protect the reputation of the likes of David Pooley.

At the end of the day, he says that his client had his case decided on its merits and not money.PRE-LITIGATION PROTOCOLS AND NEW LEGISLATION WILL REDUCE THE NUMBER OF LIBEL 'SHOW TRIALS', REPORTS STEPHEN WARDOne of the rituals among observers at the end of high-profile libel trials is a hasty reckoning of costs, which often dwarf the damages with a six- or seven-figure sum.The more incriminating documents plucked out of the air by a flamboyant QC in mid-cross-examination, the more the insults fly, the bigger the figure.So on the face of it, two developments designed to help nip libel proceedings in the bud, would seem to be bad for business.

One change is a pre-action protocol drawn up by defamation experts.

The second is legislation to enforce or encourage an early settlement in some cases.

Libel lawyers on both sides of the game are watching carefully.'I think the Lord Chancellor believes most libel actions will go to summary disposal.

I believe that is slightly hopeful thinking,' suggests Mark Thomson, a partner at London law firm Schilling & Lom, whose clients have included Hugh Grant, Liz Hurley and Bob Geldof as claimants.Susan Aslan, the partner in DJ Freeman who defends for Channel Four, Channel Five, Sky and several regional TV companies, as well as Mohammed Al-Fayed in his recent libel case with Neil Hamilton, agrees there will always be some 'show trials'.

She explains: 'You've already got to save clients' costs where you can.

But there's always going to be a category of cases where it is a matter of principle for both sides and no matter what procedures are in place, they're going to fight, no matter what.'So the new developments will mainly affect those cases which currently settle, but only late in the day.

Whatever happens in the long-term, the new procedures seem unlikely to speed things up straight away.

They are so complicated, overlapping and even contradictory that for a while they are going to have to be ironed out by judges and appeals, while all sides work out whether they work.

Uncertainty and appeals generally mean higher costs in the short-term.The major change coming is that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has finally got round to implementing the fast-track provisions of the Defamation Act 1996.

The first key element is that claimants are allowed to elect for summary disposal of a case by a judge, with a £10,000 cap on damages.The Lord Chancellor announced consultation last autumn for implementation at the start of this year.

However, libel lawyers laid so many objections that the government was only able to name an implementation date -- 28 February -- last week.

Solicitors are still waiting for details of how it will work.One difficulty is that while the Act was in limbo, waiting for implementation, the Woolf reforms arrived, bringing their own form of summary judgment for libel cases from April 1999.

It has been little used so far.

Many libel practitioners were so unhappy with some of the detail of that provision, that they used the consultation to argue for new rules for both.

According to Mr Thomson, it is not clear how damages would be determined under the Woolf procedures.

A judge might make a ruling and then leave it to a jury to determine the award later.Newspapers and television companies have lobbied for a single procedure.

Justin Walford, legal adviser for Express Newspapers, says: ' It does seem to be very complicated.

The Woolf procedure still seems to exist.

We'd hoped it would not.' After all, libel is, as Ms Aslan points out, very different from other civil actions.Once the procedures are sorted out and working smoothly, there are doubts about how attractive a summary judgment with a maximum award of £10,000 will prove to be.

Alasdair Pepper, a partner in the claimant law firm Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, says that £10,000 is 'not a large award'.

But summary disposal will be a useful additional tool, he argues.

'If we are acting for a company, for example, high damages are not the issue.

They just want it sorted.'The Defamation Act additionally provides that, if the parties cannot agree on a form of apology, a judge in summary proceedings can order compulsory publication of judgments.

'That is a power which courts don't have in full trials,' Mr Thomson points out.

It may make the summary route attractive to some claimants.Mr Walford is slightly cynical about the prospect.

'I've heard claimant lawyers saying until they're blue in the face that the money is less important than an apology and correction.

Now we'll see.'The most straightforward and universally welcomed new provision is a pre-action protocol to bring the spirit of the Woolf changes to libel actions (see [2000] Gazette, 3 February, 4).

It lays down straightforward ways to move cases on as soon as possible through an open exchange of information between both sides.

It also encourages the parties to consider arbitration and mediation as alternatives to litigation while suggesting that failure to abide by the protocol should have costs penalties.There is agreement that the protocol is a positive contribution, but also some scepticism as to whether its effect will be anything more than marginal.

As Mr Thomson says: 'We can wave the protocol at defendants and say "come on, the protocol says you must give a full response to the claim within 14 days".

We can invoke its spirit.' But at the same time he says, the provisions are no more than what experienced libel firms are doing already.Jeremy Clarke-Williams is partner at Russell Jones & Walker and chaired the Law Society-assembled working party which drew up the protocol, a draft of which has been sent out for consultation.

He says 80% of cases already fo llow the best practice the protocol lays down.

'We will have to wait and see if judges impose costs orders for breaches of the protocol.

If they do then it will obviously have more force.' It is also expected to be useful guidance for law firms which do only the occasional libel case.Another significant element of the 1996 Act is the provision which allows the defendant to make an 'offer of amends' -- apologies, damages corrections and so on.

If the claimants reject it in a way the court decides is unreasonable, they have a higher burden of proof in winning their case from then on.Mr Walford says national papers pressed hard for this clause when the Act was being drawn up: 'We wanted a way to stop gold-digging after there was a clear admission we got something wrong.'He maintains the offer of amends will not be used in a high percentage of cases, but says: 'I've got one complainant, for example, where we inadvertently used a picture of the wrong person.

It had been supplied to us by outside party.

An offer of amends would settle it.' But in less straightforward cases, where a defendant admits it was wrong on some points and not in others, he says it is harder to see how the process would work in practice.Until the effect of the changed laws become clear, practitioners agree that the jury is still out on whether the effect will be fewer big cases, or even a rash of smaller claims inspired by the lower costs.

And as Ms Aslan says, the part of a libel trial the lawyers hate most is waiting for the jury to come back with a verdict.THE UK'S POPULARITY FOR OVERSEAS LIBEL CASES COULD BE BAD FOR THE REPUTATION OF BRITISH COURTS, REPORTS TOM BLASSLibel is big business in the UK, and it is not a mystery as to why.

In comparison with other jurisdictions -- most importantly perhaps, the US -- some regard the pro-claimant slant of UK libel laws as tantamount to a curtailment of the freedom of the press.

It would be stretching the point to assert that a great deal of change is on the horizon.

But it is hoped in some quarters that a clear introduction of a defence of qualified privilege by the House of Lords late last year might lessen the risks that attend the publication of articles critical of public figures -- and being financially damned.

This case aside, critics of the status quo believe that clear dangers reside in defamation laws that stand out as idiosyncratic in the global information age.Prior to the law lords' finding in Reynolds v The Sunday Times and others, a party claiming qualified privilege had to be able to demonstrate that it had a duty to impart the information, and that the recipient had an interest in receiving it.

The press had no automatic right to the defence.

Reynolds clarifies the position of journalists by allowing that they can have a duty to disclose information relating to public figures, and that the public can have an interest in receiving it.

In addition, the law lords laid down ten 'non-exhaustive' points for the press to use as guidelines in establishing whether or not they might be able to claim a defence of qualified privilege in the event that they find themselves in the dock.

These points include: looking at the seriousness of the information or allegation, the nature of the information, and the extent to which it raised a matter of public concern; the source of the information, its status, urgency, and whether the subject of the article had been given an opportunity to reply.

The law lords held that the defence applies to information that is 'political' -- although the boundaries of that defini tion were effectively left open to further judicial elucidation.Anthony Hudson, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, thinks the profession as a whole is in two minds as to whether the decision in Reynolds represents a move towards liberalisation, or whether in effect it does little more than rearticulate the previous position: 'Some are going to think that it makes little difference .

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others think that it leaves more room for arguing that there has been a significant change from the position pre-Reynolds,' he says, adding, 'If the courts apply the [ten points] outlined in Reynolds liberally, then there is a departure.

If they apply them strictly, then we haven't got much further.'Certainly, neither journalists nor libel lawyers believe the decision in Reynolds paves the way for a US-style 'public figure defence', or grants the press the freedom outlined in the US case of Sullivan v The New York Times (1964).

In Sullivan, the US Supreme Court concluded that public figures are prohibited from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to official conduct unless it is proved that the statement was made with actual malice -- that is, in the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.

Antony Whitaker, legal consultant to Times Newspapers, stresses that in the US, defamation law is 'very much' more sympathetic to the press than its English counterpart: 'In the US, it's tied to the principle of freedom of speech.

You can't sue in an official capacity unless you can show bad faith, or malice.'Anthony Hudson points out that much will depend on how proactive journalists are in being aware of and complying with the ten points: 'Journalists really are going to have to work out how best to come within the defence.'Leading media solicitor Mark Stephens, a partner at London firm Finers Stephens Innocent, says the guidelines would be 'very difficult to exercise in the newsgathering process'.

Mr Whitaker reflects that while The Times makes stringent efforts to ensure that the subjects of its articles have an opportunity to put forward their side of a story, they can be evasive in the extreme.But English defamation law is out of step with the US in another significant sense; in that the evidential burden is on the defendant -- not the claimant -- to prove his case.

By contrast, US law holds that claimants have the burden of proving that they have been defamed.One consequence of this pro-claimant climate is the enhanced threat to the reputation of English courts that is posed by foreign nationals indulging in forum shopping.

'We're seeing an absolute boom in libel tourism,' says Mr Stephens.

So-called libel tourists take advantage of the relatively high damages awarded by English juries, in addition to a favourable evidential burden, by pursuing litigation in the UK instead of their home jurisdiction.

The other plus-points from the perspective of foreign plaintiffs are the obvious difficulties of gathering evidence from abroad, and the comfort that their reputation hasn't necessarily preceded them.

And because the UK court system commands so much respect, a UK court victory is a powerful tool in the armoury of the scurrilous.

Says Mr Stephens: 'Having won an order in the UK, litigants can take it home as evidence of their vindication.

But eventually this is likely to devalue globally the reputation of the British courts.'The House of Lords is currently deciding an important issue of forum non conveniens, which when decided should have ramifications for 'libel tourists'.

Mr Ste phens says that the 'protectionist' approach to public figures in the UK is being exploited.

The issue should be addressed as a matter of public policy, he contends.

It isn't yet clear whether Reynolds will make a perceptible difference to the outcome of libel litigation in UK courts, but many lawyers will be pressing for change in any event.