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Montreal journalist Lou Sabatino, under witness protection after nearly being gunned down by the Mafia, is sucked into the quirky world of a conniving Russian dominatrix who has secretly recorded herself putting the whip to the bare bottom of a high-ranking federal cabinet minister. It's the scoop of the century, but too hot a potato - if Lou breaks the story, he risks exposing himself to the mercies of the Mafia. Instead, he shows the video to Green Party leader Margaret Blake. The video is leaked, and Margaret is sued by the minister for $50 million. Enter Arthur Beauchamp, Margaret's husband and famed criminal lawyer, who had found - or so he hoped - blissful retirement on idyllic Garibaldi Island on the West Coast. But now he's representing the woman he loves while tormented by fears that she's embroiled in an affair.

CLYDE: The thrust of [Vickie Stewart]'s claim was not just that there were similarities between her and a character named SuSu in the novel, but a very large number of similarities. The author had known Stewart ever since they grew up as neighbors in Atlanta. Stewart had been through a series of interesting life experiences, including a very protracted divorce in which she took out \"wanted\" ads in Florida newspapers on her husband when he fled Georgia without paying alimony. The author incorporated a lot of details from Stewart's life into the back story of the SuSu character because she thought those traits showed courage and nerve. Unfortunately, in addition to being feisty and strong, the SuSu character was also promiscuous and struggled with alcoholism. CLYDE: Frankly, the novel itself was very helpful evidence in the case. The novel has all sorts of ingrethents that make it clear it's a work of fiction. It's told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. It's filled with impossibly snappy dialogue. It has several \"I Love Lucy\"-type scenes as the characters attempt to take revenge on a philandering husband. The novel is really a farce, poking fun in a gentle way at the characteristics of women who grew up in the South in the 1950s. It's very funny and only rarely serious. Especially because of the context of the novel, Stewart had difficulty demonstrating that anyone really believed the character SuSu was her. Much of the trial involved Stewart calling her friends to testify that they recognized the similarities between her and the character when they read the novel. But, on crossexamination, those same friends generally testified that they knew there were differences between Stewart and SuSu and that the novel did not make them think their friend was promiscuous or an alcoholic. That ultimately hurt the momentum of plaintiff's claim. CLYDE: Unfortunately, no. We presented the court with what we believed was a legally accurate and complete set of jury instructions. Our instructions made clear that plaintiff had two burdens at the outset. First, she had to prove that the challenged parts of the novel were reasonably understood as presenting \"actual facts,\" not just fictional speech. Second, plaintiff also had to prove that those alleged actual facts were \"of and concerning\" her, not just a fictional character. Unfortunately, in a rush to put together final instructions, the trial court largely merged the \"actual facts\" test into the \"of and concerning\" test. As a result, the court's final instructions left the jury with the impression that if the novel could be understood as being about plaintiff in any way, a verdict on the libel claim was required. This almost assured a verdict on that claim, particularly because the strongest part of our defense was that this novel could not be reasonably understood as stating actual facts about anybody, including plaintiff.

1. In Roman law, in which prosecution had a limited role, slander (calumnia, in old Latin kalumnia) represented so serious a threat for the administration of justice that the false accuser was punished by the branding of the letter K (the initial of kalumniator) on his forehead. It is Davide Stimilli’s merit to have demonstrated the importance of this fact for the interpretation of Kafka’s Trial, which the incipit unreservedly presents as a slanderous trial (‘Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested’¹). K., Stimilli suggests, recalling that Kafka had studied

The issue of whether a journalist's novel can be libelous is discussed. Labeling a work \"fiction\" cannot give the author carte blance to defame someone. The case involving a woman who is suing Joe Klein, author of \"Primary Colors,\" and Random House for defamation and intentional infliction of emotion distress is discussed.