Conrad Black says Random House caused him $1.25 million worth of suffering

Conrad Black must love lawyers as much as Barbara Amiel loves her Hungarian kuvasz dogs. In the midst of working through a few leftover Hollinger lawsuits—and one of his own against British author Tom Bower for his biography

of Black and Amiel—the baron filed a $1.25-million defamation lawsuit against publisher Random House of Canada and author Bruce Livesey over Livesey’s book Thieves of Bay Street. (Further proof that Black takes no prisoners: Random House owns McClelland and Stewart, which published Lord Black’s recent memoir, A Matter of Principle. So he is essentially suing his own publisher.) According to the lawsuit, four passages in the book are defamatory, and their publication has brought the baron “hatred, ridicule and contempt in Canada.” As usual, we prefer the over-the-top words of the baron himself, who told Peter Mansbridge he’s being treated “like a medieval leper, with bells on my head to warn the unsuspecting of the approach of moral taint and turpitude” since he got out of jail. [National Post]