Peta Buscombe, the baroness who chairs the Press Complaints Commission, has been sued for libel by a solicitor.
Writs have also been issued against the PCC itself and the Metropolitan Police by a London-based solicitor, Mark Lewis.
He is claiming damages for libel, including aggravated damages, plus an injunction to restrain all three parties from publishing the allegations that allegedly accuse him of lying.
The case centres on the News of the World phone hacking scandal, and Lewis's statement of claim is a fascinating document in itself, because it runs over the history of the affair in some detail.
It refers to The Guardian article in July last year by Nick Davies, Trail of hacking and deceit under nose of Tory PR chief. That piece revealed that the paper had paid £400,000 in damages to Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers' Association's chief executive, for its involvement in the illegal interception of messages left on Taylor's mobile phone.
The PCC immediately decided to investigate claims that the News of the World had previously misled it when it first looked into the affair in 2007 following the jailing of the NoW's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, for intercepting voicemail messages.
While that second inquiry was being conducted, Lewis - the solicitor who represented Taylor - gave evidence to the Commons media and culture select committee.
During his evidence he told of a conversation with a Met police detective sergeant, Mark Maberly, who had said 6,000 people had been "involved" in the NoW's hacking activities rather than the "handful" originally claimed to have been victims of phone message interceptions.
When the PCC inquired into this statement by Lewis, a Met police lawyer told the then PCC director, Tim Toulmin, that Maberly had been wrongly quoted by Lewis. In other words, it suggested that Lewis had lied.
In November 2009, armed with this Met police response, Buscombe addressed the Society of Editors' conference about the affair, saying that Maberly had been misquoted. She told a Guardian reporter: "He didn't say it. He is said to have said it."
Lewis was outraged by what he regarded as a slur on his reputation because Buscombe's speech and remarks were widely reported, and were up put on the Society of Editors' website.
Soon after he sent a letter, as The Guardian's David Leigh reported Lewis called for Buscombe's resignation for making "extremely serious" false allegations against him.
In a letter to Buscombe, Lewis wrote: "You have betrayed any semblance of impartiality and regrettably ought to find yourself in a position where the honourable action would be for you to resign."
He explained that his conversation with Maberly had been witnessed by two others, including a barrister.
"I am deeply concerned that you have thought it proper to criticise my evidence to the select committee without either having the courtesy or the propriety to put the allegations to me first," said Lewis. "I regret that your failure to act properly has compromised any veneer of impartiality that you sought to create."
Leigh quoted a PCC spokesman who said: "Our statement was based on a follow-up piece of information that we received. We made clear that is what happened and said we could consider it. It was a perfectly legitimate and reasonable thing for us to have done."
In April this year, following the publication of the select committee's report, Buscombe wrote to the committee "to correct the record." Her correction appears on the PCC website. It says:
Your report says that the chairman of the PCC issued a statement in November 2009 which may have suggested that Gordon Taylor's lawyer, Mr Lewis, misled the committee. This is not the case, as the PCC made publicly clear at the time.
Baroness Buscombe has never suggested - and does not believe - that Mr Lewis misled the select committee and her statement, which made no reference to Mr Lewis, was not intended as a criticism of him or the evidence which he gave to the Select Committee.
Baroness Buscombe regrets that her statement may have been misunderstood and that this has been of concern to Mr Lewis. Baroness Buscombe and the Commission therefore wish to make the position entirely clear.
Today a PCC spokesman said: "I can confirm that we have received writs on behalf of Mr Lewis. We cannot make any further comment."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jun/23/peta-buscombe-medialaw
