Torts

• Author: International Law Group

The defendant, Conde Nast Publications Ltd., edits and publishes "Vanity Fair" magazine in New York. It also circulates a small number of issues in England and France. The July 2002 issue featured an article about the famous movie director, Roman Polanski, the plaintiff, who had dual Polish and French nationality and lived in France. In August 1969, the Manson gang had murdered Sharon Tate, his wife.

In 1977, at the age of 43, the plaintiff had pleaded guilty in a California court to sexual intercourse with a 13-year old girl. The following year he had fled the U.S. before having been sentenced and has remained a fugitive.

During a New York stopover on his way from London to California for Ms. Tate's burial, Vanity Fair reported that plaintiff had walked into a New York restaurant and had sat at a friend's table close up to a strikingly beautiful Swedish girl he had never met before. The article quoted an observer as having declared: "Fascinated by his [seductive] performance, I watched as he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long honeyed spiel which ended with the promise 'I will make another Sharon Tate of you.'" Plaintiff denies that anything of the sort ever happened.

Plaintiff brought a libel suit against the magazine in an English court which set the case down for a jury trial. Wishing to testify from Paris, plaintiff then moved for an order pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 32.3. It provides that "The court may allow a witness to give evidence through a video [conference] link [VCF] or by other means." Plaintiff explained that he was afraid to give live evidence in a London court lest British authorities extradite him to the United States.

The first instance judge ruled that the circumstances very heavily weighed in favor of authorizing the VCF. He declared that he had heard nothing that would warrant denying plaintiff his access to justice in proceedings where he is trying to exonerate himself with respect to a defamatory publication within the court's jurisdiction. The defendant publisher appealed.

Before the appellate Court, the defendant argued that the trial judge failed to honor the principle that it would impugn the administration of justice if a convicted criminal could litigate his reputation in England while abusing the court's procedures to escape the judicial results of his admitted criminal conduct in the U.S. In opposition, the plaintiff contended that to refuse him the chance to tell his story by VCF would...