Word: actuallity
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What it finally boils down to is a matter of statistical logic and insurer psychology. If a few giant jury awards, actual or merely possible, can offset the premiums on an entire line of insurance, the companies feel they must raise premiums for everybody until there is some hope of making a profit. This means that premiums may bear no relationship to an individual policyholder's record, and buyers of many kinds of insurance are suddenly paying three or four times as much as they did a year or so earlier. Of all places, Hartford, Conn., known as the insurance...
...Another oft-used example is of two Maryland men who supposedly put a hot-air balloon into a commercial laundry dryer. The machine exploded, injuring both men, who won $885,000 from the maker of the dryer. What actually happened is that the men took the balloon to a hospital that had laundry equipment designed for industrial purposes. The dryer vibrated violently and then exploded. Both men were injured; one required microsurgery to reattach his hand, which was almost severed. The dryer's maker had a patent on a device that would have stopped the dryer automatically if it began...
Equally significant is the growing size of punitive damages, which supposedly serve the same purpose as a don't-ever-do-anything-like-that-again fine of the defendant. Juries sometimes find that a person's actual damages amounted to only a few thousand dollars, yet decide that the corporation at fault should also pay punitive damages in the millions. In one startling case, now awaiting decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, an Alabama couple sued Aetna Life & Casualty Co., claiming that it had wrongfully refused to pay $1,650 of the wife's hospital bill. A jury awarded them...
Edmund Morris, Pulitzer-prizewinning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, had never been so close to the actual events of power. Every sound, every gesture, every word was caught and cataloged in his quick mind. As the final seconds before broadcast time ticked off, Morris saw a sudden movement beneath the President's table. Reagan's left foot was tapping off the seconds, a reflex planted more than 50 years ago in the soul of a fledgling broadcaster. Morris cradled a tiny black notebook in his left hand and with a thin-line pen jotted down his observation. Later, he transcribed...
...what Bredin calls "a great document, one which marks an essential date in the history of journalism." J 'Accuse was "an indictment of the forces and virtues of traditional France, its religious passion, military spirit, and hierarchies." Zola's outrage proved contagious. Slowly the bodyguard of lies surrounding the actual villains began to defect. Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, a German agent, fled the country. Lieut. Colonel Hubert Henry, who had forged Dreyfus' handwriting on incriminating documents, committed suicide...