What you say about the libel laws of the two countries is very true, Jim. But what’s fascinating about the whole thing is that Mr. Brewer is threatening to sue Mr. Norton *in the United States.* He is quoted as saying, “I reiterate my demand that you stop your defamatory blogging and invasion of my privacy. If you do not, I will seek redress in the courts of the country where I live – the United States. As your solicitor will have told you, you are subject to jurisdiction here as you knowingly libeled me on the worldwide web, you know me to be a resident of the USA and you know and intend to injure me where I live in the USA.”

In other words, he’s apparently willing to forego the more favorable (to plaintiffs) libel climate of the U.K. and go through the U.S. courts, where the burden of proof will be squarely on his own shoulders.

I’ll confess this makes no sense at all to me. If he seems not to have much of a case in the U.K, well, in the U.S. he’d have nothing at all. He’s also threatening to sue everybody who’s made a comment he doesn’t like: (“I will seek an injunction against you and those with whom you have collaborated in your activities. I also will take legal action against you for damages for libel. In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.”) That’s an awful lot of people.

Seems like the classic definition of folly to me–behavior directly contrary to one’s own self-interest.

In terms of penalties for bankruptcy fraud, it doesn’t look good when a trustee formally asks for the bankruptcy petition to be dismissed. Mr. Brewer is going to have to sue literally hundreds of bloggers and the burden of proof will be on him to prove that our discussions are untrue.

Is he? Neither the UK nor the US are not parties to that Convention.

I had read him as simply referring to the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial Process in Civil and Commercial Matters. He’s simply saying “Don’t think I can’t serve you in England.” A US judgment would be recognized/enforced in England only at common law (and there might in fact be trouble with that in a case like this, though it’s hard to comment without knowing more).

This leaves unexamined, of course, the basis upon which Brewer might be able to persuade the US courts to assume jurisdiction in the first place.