Word: battisti
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Battisti says that he and members of the team occasionally helped Reggie with his studies but that the school does not have a budget for formal tutoring. He says the real problem was that Reggie failed to apply himself. "Abe Lincoln and them people were self-taught," he said. But Reggie's teachers say he did try, he struggled to overcome a third-grade reading level, fought off the exhaustion of practice and in the end succumbed to the realization that he could not catch up. "He was hoping against hope," says Jack Carmichael, who heads the school's social...
...senior at Marion High School in rural South Carolina three years ago, Reggie was an All-State center. More than a dozen universities salivated over his 22-points-a-game average. They paid little mind to his scant 2.0 grade-point average. It was Bob Battisti, coach of Northwestern Oklahoma State University, who persuaded Reggie to attend his school. What won him over, said Reggie, was Battisti's promise that a tutor would be available to help him through the difficult academic times ahead. "I knew I wasn't no A student," explains Reggie. For the Ford family...
Among the questions before the panel: Was the Climaco firm appointed examiner in the White Motor bankruptcy (possible fee: $1 million) as a payoff for hiring Nephew Gino? The firm was chosen by Bankruptcy Judge Mark Schlachet, a Battisti protege and the son-in-law of one of Battisti's close friends. Schlachet resigned last year while under investigation for improperly giving high-paying court appointments to friends...
...less standard influence-peddling inquiry became more titillating last month when Judge Aldrich made public her role in the investigation. Remembering her Christmas-party chat, she decided to check out Nephew Gino with one of the Climaco partners, Shimon Kaplan. According to Aldrich, Kaplan told her that young Battisti had received $41,000 in bonuses, roughly 10% of all fees from cases "attributable" to his uncle. Stunned by Aldrich's assertion, Kaplan and the Climaco firm formally denied making any deals with Judge Battisti or his nephew...
...will probably be months before the grand jury decides whether to indict Battisti, and it is not clear if anyone will review Aldrich's role. For the moment, though, one certain casualty of the scandal is the dignity of Cleveland's federal bench. Says one of its judges: "I wish this were all a bad dream and we could wake up and say it's over...