This Toronto Star story looks at a former UN official's lawsuit against the Washington Post. Some experts say if the plaintiff wins, it would open the doors to any Internet publisher being sued in any jurisdiction in the world.

Some excerpts:

The case, Bangoura v. Washington Post, raises "key issues for the future of global freedom of expression," says the coalition, which counts The New York Times, several other U.S. news organizations including Time Inc., Dow Jones and Co., the Hearst Corporation and CNN and major newspapers in Canada, Britain, Australia and Japan among its members.

The coalition is supporting the Washington Post in its battle with Cheickh Bangoura, a former United Nations employee who was the subject of two stories in the newspaper in January 1997.

The stories examined allegations of sexual harassment, financial improprieties and nepotism by Bangoura while he was an officer of the U.N.'s drug control program in West Africa, as well as allegations that his ties to former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali were the reason he was not disciplined.

Later that month, Bangoura was fired by the U.N. and moved his family to Quebec, eventually settling in Ontario in June 2000. In court documents, he says he was cleared of wrongdoing before the reports were published and the stories have made it difficult for him to get a job. The only one he's found was a brief stint as a settlement worker for newcomers to Canada, he said. More than six years after the stories were published, Bangoura filed a lawsuit against the Post and three of its reporters in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, claiming $9 million in damages.

Relying on a long list of legal precedents, the Post's lawyers brought a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds the case had no "real or substantial connection" to Ontario. Bangoura had little or no reputation in Ontario because he did not live here when the stories were published and the reporters who worked on the story were based in the U.S., Kenya and Ivory Coast.

If Bangoura's lawsuit were allowed to proceed simply because the stories had been accessible in Ontario through the Internet, it would mean that publishers worldwide would face the prospect of being dragged into other countries' courts for libel, no matter how remote their connection to the country might be, the Post argued. That would encourage "forum shopping" by libel plaintiffs and have a devastating impact on freedom of expression, the newspaper argued.

It's a complex story. Please read the whole article.