Word: jailing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...delay and Distillers' refusal to offer more than niggardly settlements to the victims, the case dragged on into the '70s. All the while, the British press was banned from saying anything about it. The reason: under British "contempt of court" law, judges quickly impose fines and jail terms on editors and reporters who comment on any case under court review. The purpose of the law is to prevent "trial by newspaper," but no attempt is made to balance fair trial and free press; the law is applied any time press coverage could possibly be prejudicial, even if publication...
...miserly with the Thalidomide victims. The stories provoked public outrage and pressured Distillers to raise its original settlement offer sevenfold, from an average of about $25,000 per child to $175,000. The articles were clearly in contempt of court. But the Sunday Times managed to avoid fines and jail terms by striking a deal: it agreed to show its final-and most damning-article to the government before publishing it. That article, detailing how Distillers had been negligent in selling the dangerous drug in the first place, was firmly banned by a lower court. The paper appealed...
Some other Exxon executives are less circumspect. Mused one to Tompkins: ''What we're playing is something like Monopoly, only the board has been changed around, and the dice are loaded. Every time you roll you go directly to jail, and whenever you do collect money it is in rials or yen. Worst of all, you have to play blindfolded while your opponents get to cheat and knock over the table in periodic rages...
...news organizations have been bemoaning so many lost First Amendment battles in the courts that they have begun to sound like a Greek chorus in a long running tragedy. In the past year, the U.S. Supreme Court has let New York Times Reporter Myron Farber go to jail for refusing to turn over his notes in a criminal trial, allowed Government investigators access to journalists' phone records, and in a decision that shocked many reporters, upheld a surprise police raid of a newspaper office. Last week the high court ruled 6 to 3 that newsmen must answer questions about...
...been held in contempt. Fines of $25,000 to $50,000 would have been levied every day. In the book's most belligerent section, the judge wishes that Nixon had indeed been indicted and gone to trial. If convicted in Sirica's court, he would have been sentenced to jail, regardless of the psychological consequences to the country. The judge, whose penchant for stiff sentences earned him the sobriquet "Maximum John," also regrets that he had to rule against public release of the White House tapes. They were, he concludes, "the most intimate and most damning conversations conducted...