Too many foreigners jet in to sue foreign publications, authors and broadcasters before our claimant-friendly libel courts. Foreigners unable or unwilling to take their chances before their own courts come to ours.

Arnold Schwarzenegger started the trend in 1990 flying in from Los Angeles to sue Wendy Leigh, a Florida-based American author, for an unauthorised biography to which he took exeption. A stream of celebrities followed, suing for slights that are not actionable in the US.

The low point came when Roman Polanki, the Polish film director, sued the US magazine Vanity Fair. To their undying shame the courts in London bent to accommodate this fugitive from US justice and allowed him to give evidence by video link from Paris — there being no extradition treaty with the US.

After the celebrities came a slew of Russian oligarchs followed, after 9/11, by a camel train of Gulf billionaires.

The law has not kept pace with the way in which the media have become internationalised. Our libel courts have fired the starting gun on a race to the bottom. The courts of this country have (rightly) long been regarded as the home of international commercial law disputes. But, by accepting jurisdiction to hear the cases of libel tourists, we have to accept that the courts of other jurisdictions from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe will want to follow suit and accept jurisdiction on libel claims in relation to matters where there is little or no circulation or connection to the jurisdiction.

Those countries will judge our journalists according to their own standards. We have seen the internet availability of articles drag The Guardian to Zimbabwe, other English newspapers have seen their journalists criminalised for their writings in countries with criminal libel laws; Tesco is suing three individuals in Thailand for £17 million. And that in a country, with a touch of Dickens, which still has debtors’ jail. The courts of Indonesia have recently fined Time magazine £50 million, provoking widespread outrage at the amount of the award. We have a cap on damages of £200,000 and they must be proportionate to the means of the defendant.

Books are already being cancelled by publishers because the economics of publishing are such that they cannot sustain the costs of a libel action. Cambridge University Press recently pulped a book on the mere threat of suit.

Most worrying of all is the latest trend for foreigners to drag NGOs into our libel courts over their reports. Typically an NGO will publish as responsibly as it can a detailed piece of research on an area of controversy or difficulty. Foreign politicians, businessmen and companies now seek to drag foreign NGOs to our courts to try to gain a victory against an indigent opponent. NGOs reporting abuses of the environment, human rights, corruption, torture and so forth are forced to dissipate their resources defending claims brought by the rich and powerful.

Our libel courts stand in a state of obloquy. A simple change might prevent some of the wilder excesses. The European Parliament is bringing in the Rome II regulation passed in December, but excluding libel and privacy. The commission wants to include libel and privacy and has begun a study with a view to including them within Rome II this year.

That will not change rules governing which court can try a claim. But it will determine the national law that will apply: the law of the country to which the publication or broadcast is principally directed.

The logic of testing a publication against the law with which it was intended to comply is irresistible. Let libel tourists test their mettle in a fair fight. Let’s consign the Wild West of the libel courts to the dustbin of history.

The author, head of international media at Finers Stephens Innocent LLP, spoke on libel tourism at the Freedom House/Article 19 event to commemorate World Press Freedom Day

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