Word: bryants
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...coming to terms with Bear Bryant...
Ever since last spring, said University of Alabama Football Coach Paul Bryant, he has been unable to keep his mind on his work. Instead, his thoughts kept turning darkly to a March 1963 Saturday Evening Post article that accused him and Wally Butts, former football coach at the University of Georgia, of trying to fix a football game. Bryant also remembered an earlier Post article claiming that he taught "excessively rough football." Last week the Post's parent Curtis Publishing Co. took a long step toward relieving "Bear" Bryant's gloom. It handed him $300,000 in settlement...
Although the settlement represented less than 3% of the $10,500,000 that Bryant was asking, the $300,000 is taxfree. It will come to him as compensatory damages-direct payment for the anguish, the loss of salary and the loss of face in the football community that he may have suffered because of the Post's accusations. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service does not consider such payments taxable, although punitive damages in libel cases-damages assessed as fines against the libeler but paid to the libeled person-are taxed as regular income...
Thus Bear Bryant will probably wind up with more spending money than Wally Butts, who also sued the Post. An Atlanta federal jury awarded Butts $3,060,000, but last month the trial judge held the sum "grossly excessive" and reduced it to $460,000, which Butts accepted. Even so, Butts will keep only a small portion of his award: $60,000 in tax-free compensatory damages and, after income tax deductions, only about $76,000 of the $400,000 in punitive damages levied against the Post...
Faced with this alternative, Wally Butts decided to take the $460,000. For obvious reasons, though, the Post went ahead with its plans to appeal the verdict. Waiting his turn in court next month is Alabama's Bryant-who has filed suit for $10 million in damages arising from the same Post article...