Just weeks before he goes on trial in Chicago on charges that he and three other executives plundered $80 million out of Hollinger International, Conrad Black has decided to sue his British biographer Tom Bower, reports The Globe and Mail.

According to the report, the statement of claim alleges Bower's book is "evil and devoid of any redeeming or even mitigating qualities" and has brought Black into "into hatred, ridicule and contempt". And his point is?

Unshaken, Bower sent an email to the paper saying he couldn't care less. "Robert Maxwell sued me many times and look what happened to him,'' Bower wrote.

Of course, Maxwell drowned in mysterious circumstances 16 years ago when his naked body was found floating in the Atlantic after he went overboard his Luxury yacht while cruising in the Canary Islands. At the time of his death his media empire was on the point of collapse. It later emerged he had looted hundreds of millions of pounds from his newspapers' pension funds, leaving thousands of employees penniless. The state of his business affairs led many to assume he had committed suicide rather than face bankruptcy and disgrace.

One assumes that Bower is saying that Black's reputation, like Maxwell's, will end up somewhere south of the toilet at the end of his trial.

Of course, Black himself is a serial litigant. Targets of his lawsuits have included the US Government and the Canadian Government.