The Associated Press reports that bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell has filed a libel lawsuit against another author and is asking a federal judge to bar him from posting defamatory messages about her on the Internet. Cornwell wants the court to enforce an injunction issued in 2000 against Leslie R. Sachs and seeks a broader ban to prevent Sachs from further writing negatively about Cornwell on Web sites or allowing such statements to remain on those sites.
The injunction in 2000 stemmed from Sachs’ book, THE VIRGINIA GHOST MURDERS, a mystery published in 1998 about a modern-day sleuth who becomes involved in solving a Civil War-era murder. In an e-mail response to Cornwell’s attorneys, Sachs called the lawsuit “hilarious.” Sachs, whose last known U.S. residence is listed in court documents as Woodbridge, Va., called himself a “political refugee” who moved to Europe in 2004 to escape Cornwell’s legal actions. A hearing in the case is scheduled for May 22 in Richmond.