SAN BERNARDINO - Lawyers for a High Desert newspaper publisher and the wife of Sheriff Gary Penrod are expected to decide today whether they are ready for trial next week in a multi-million dollar libel lawsuit.

Penrod's wife, Nancy Bohl, filed a libel suit against Valley Wide Newspapers, a collection of newspapers owned by Raymond Pryke that includes the Hesperia Resorter, in June 2000.

The civil trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday in San Bernardino Superior Court.

Lawyers on each side have said they are ready for trial, which is estimated to last between two and four weeks.

"We're good to go," Pryke's lawyer, E. Thomas Barham, said in a recent interview.

Bohl's lawyer, John Rowell, declined to comment about his client's case.

In various articles, the papers accused Bohl, a psychotherapist and owner of The Counseling Team International, of using her relationship with Penrod to win sheriff's department counseling contracts and leaking deputies' confidential psychiatric information to the sheriff.

Bohl denied the allegations while Pryke, in an earlier statement, has called the newspaper's articles "factually accurate." A judge ruled in 2005 that the articles impugned the integrity of Bohl and The Counseling Team and ordered Pryke to pay $3 million. An appeal last year overturned the decision.