See you in court: Fleet Street barons set for libel battle

Two of Fleet Street's most singular newspaper proprietors could end up facing each other in court after Conrad Black, owner of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, decided to sue Richard Desmond, owner of the Express Group, for libel. Lord Black, who issued High Court proceedings for damages yesterday, said he was "outraged" at "scurrilous articles" in Mr Desmond's Sunday Express claiming his company was in financial trouble.

Newspaper proprietors have traditionally been wary of attacking each other in print, let alone in court. But this action brings any such conventions to an end. Mr Desmond, Fleet Street's newest proprietor, made his fortune through adult magazines and is notoriously plainly spoken, his utterances peppered with Anglo Saxon.

The recently ennobled Lord Black, a 57-year-old Canadian, is much more restrained of speech, but is not shy of airing his views in his newspapers on subjects ranging from the Middle East to the sad decline of the mini-skirt.

Yesterday the peer insisted he and his companies had been "grossly libelled" and solicitors for Hollinger International – the parent company of the Telegraph group – had issued High Court proceedings seeking "substantial damages and an injunction". He added: "Virtually every word in these scurrilous articles is not simply wrong, but the reverse of the truth."

The articles, which appeared on 3 and 10 November, said the company was "facing its biggest financial crisis ever" after "a credit facility was cancelled by its bankers", TD Securities. Lord Black said he was "outraged" no attempt was made to check the accuracy of the articles with himself, Hollinger or the Telegraph.

It is not the first time Mr Desmond, 50, has used his newspapers to attack fellow proprietors. An article in the Daily Express recently described Associated's owner Lord Rothermere as a "dictator", soon after Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre referred to Mr Desmond as an "appalling man" and "a pornographer".

Days later, an article by the Express "group media correspondent" Frank Bailey, the pseudonym said to be used by former Mirror "City slicker" Anil Bhoyrul, said Jonathan Harmsworth, the present Lord Rothermere, "is effectively running a corporate dictatorship, giving shareholders no say in how the company is run".

Attacks on Lord Black have been more subtle. The Sunday Express Power List 2002, listed its owner, Mr Desmond, at number 16 as "an assured leader with high-level contacts", and ranked Lord Black at 215, stating he "commands relatively little power in the UK". Lord Black's last public battle was against Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who tried to block his appointment to the Lords. Lord Black, himself worth £121m, renounced his Canadian citizenship, going on to publicly attack his former homeland as a one-party state doomed to mediocrity.

The main article of the two said to have enraged him appeared on 3 November under the byline Frank Bailey. "The author of the first article, whom Lord Black and his companies strongly suspect writes under a pseudonym, has made the most basic of errors concerning these loan notes," a Hollinger statement said yesterday. It insisted TD [Toronto Dominion] Securities did not withdraw from the original refinancing arrangement detailed in the article but that Hollinger pulled out because it wanted a better deal with another syndicate member.

Lord Black said yesterday: "There is no cash crisis, nor any prospect of one and no threat to suppliers and creditors. On the contrary, Hollinger's debt position has been reduced by over 75 per cent in two years." A spokesman for Northern & Shell said: "We will contest vigorously whatever needs to be contested."

Ironically, both groups print their papers on jointly owned presses at West Ferry in London Docklands, a commercial relationship that has not been harmonious since Mr Desmond bought Express Newspapers.