Word: pegler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Julia Harpman Pegler, 61, wife of Columnist Westbrook Pegler, whom she married in 1922; of a heart attack; in Rome...
Nearly six years after he first brought a libel suit against Hearst Columnist Westbrook Pegler, former War Correspondent Quentin Reynolds last week got ready to collect. The U.S. Supreme Court ended the long legal battle by refusing to review a New York federal jury's $175,001 award to Reynolds (TIME, July 5, 1954 et seq.), after Pegler branded him a nudist and coward...
...Pegler will not be out of pocket: under his contract Hearst is liable for the tab, which will run to more than $200,000, counting attorneys' fees and 6% interest from the day of judgment. Nor is the fat award all pure gravy for Reynolds. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service now has a lien against him for $40,000 for back taxes, also expects to collect income tax on the whole sum. But Reynolds' lawyer believes that the sum is taxfree; thus the award may land in court again...
There was nothing wrong, said the Hearst lawyers, with Pegler's writing that "Reynolds went nuding along the public road [with] a wench." After all, "perfectly honorable people are nudists, and . . . nudism [is] not a crime." Pegler's charge that Reynolds proposed marriage to Heywood Broun's widow in the car on the way to Broun's grave was not libelous either, said the lawyers, since even the Mosaic Code imposes "upon a brother the duty of proposing to his dead brother's widow." As for Pegler's charge that Reynolds had "a yellow...
...jest. Last week Federal Judge Harold R. Medina ruled for the court: "This is a curious and unprofitable sort of jesting, as others may not view the humor in the same light . . . These explanations are wholly without merit or substance." The court unanimously upheld the $175,001 judgment against Pegler and his Hearst employers, who must pay the bill under terms of Pegler's contract. It is one of the biggest libel awards ever given by a U.S. court...