I hope I have served you well and I will continue working for you until the writs for the federal election are issued.
But business is booming for the country's dozen or so expert commercial mediators, while the number of writs served in the commercial court has fallen sharply (see chart).The government is now planning new rules that will encourage public-sector managers to use mediation.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are already said to be paying lawyers in western capitals to prepare the writs.
Several well-known spammers have been on the receiving end of writs from the larger ISPs, most notably America Online.
ABUSE of free speech by the powerful arouses public ire whether the culprits are newspaper proprietors bullying politicians or thin-skinned tycoons silencing their critics with libel writs.
L'Unita might close if it loses.Mr Berlusconi's writs seem to be part of a drive to flush out the few remaining rebel enclaves in the Italian media.
The opposition parties would probably clog the courts with writs challenging his orders.
Columbia eventually backed down, but only in the face of both public criticism and a series of writs from biotechnology companies.
"Metastasi" by Gianluigi Nuzzi and Claudio Antonelli, which deals with the relations between the Northern League politicians and the 'Ndrangheta, Calabria's Mafia, and has brought Chiarelettere and the authors writs for defamation, has sold over 60,000 copies since it came out six months ago.
In this respect, at least, Silvio Berlusconi's Italy is distancing itself from western Europe and becoming more like weaker democracies farther east.The Rome demonstration was called to protest over writs issued by the prime minister against two left-leaning newspapers.
Mr Peyrelevade brought two writs for defamation against me: the first, for two articles on January 13th 2001, "A new scandal at Crédit Lyonnais" and "The curse continues", was rejected.
