SOME sanity has been restored to the vexed field of libel suits - with judges, in effect, now setting limits on what damages juries may award.

So ends the crazy situation of mammoth pay-outs to people who had their feelings hurt while, elsewhere in the courts, people who suffered actual serious injury were being award coppers in compensation as a result.

Also driven out are the gold-diggers - the quick-to-sue sorts with a sob story and hopes that a soft jury would put them in clover.

Fine. But the libel mess is still far from sorted, as we see from the case of Tory MP David Ashby who faces ruin and a £500,000 bill after losing his action against the Sunday Times.

Mr Ashby is, of course, largely the author of his own misfortune.

He plunged into a legal cockpit that only the most confident litigant would enter.

But look at those costs - half a million pounds against the £50,000 or so that Mr Ashby might have got if he had won.

We can praise the law for ending the injustice of over-the-top libel awards, but will it or its practitioners ever seek to bring some reality and sanity to the matter of their spectacular costs?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.