Polanski seeks libel suit in U.K.

Lawyers for film director Roman Polanski will ask England’s highest court today to allow him to sue for libel while avoiding the risk of being extradited to the United States for child sex offenses.

Polanski, an Oscar-winning director who fled the U.S. in 1977 after admitting having sex with a 13-year-old girl, wants to sue Vanity Fair magazine over an article he says defamed him by accusing him of seducing a woman who was with another man while on the way to the funeral of his actress wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969.

He is seeking to use the English courts for the libel action -- which Vanity Fair’s publisher, Conde Nast, is contesting -- but is scared to come to Britain for fear of being extradited to the United States. He wants to testify via video link from Paris, where he now lives.

A lower British court rejected that idea last year, saying the arrangement would be allowing him to use the judicial process when it suits him but to avoid it when it does not.