A lawyer for Roman Polanski said the filmmaker was being denied justice because he isn’t allowed to sue a magazine for defamation in a British court while remaining in France.
The Polish-born director, who has lived in France since fleeing child-sex charges in the United States in 1978, is seeking to sue Vanity Fair over a 2002 article that accused him of seducing a woman while on the way to the funeral of his wife Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by Charles Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in 1969.
Polanski, 71, wants to testify by video link because he fears being deported to the United States, with which Britain has an extradition treaty.
Last year, a lower court judge ruled Polanski could give evidence by video link. But after an appeal by Vanity Fair publisher Conde Nast, the Court of Appeal said he had to appear in person, ruling that justice “is just a Eurostar journey away.”
Polanski’s lawyer, Richard Spearman, told the House of Lords, Britain’s highest court of appeal, that the courts were preventing Polanski from suing for defamation because he was a fugitive from U.S. justice.
“This leaves the case in a mess and has left a situation where a defendant can get away with a libel scot-free,” Spearman said.
Conde Nast is based in the United States, but libel actions concerning the international media are often brought in British courts because they are considered friendlier to claimants than their American counterparts.
The hearing before a panel of five Law Lords was expected to end Thursday, but a decision wasn’t expected immediately.