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As a court reporter for Scripps-Howard's Cleveland Press, methodical young (32) Leonard Hammer was appalled by the slipshod way couples were divorced in Cuyahoga County. Hammer thought that a couple could get a decree without either of them appearing before a judge, or even presenting any evidence.

To test his theory, Reporter Hammer persuaded the Press makeup editor, Richard Campbell, 25, and his wife Florence Margaret to act as guinea pigs. Signing himself "C. P. Ress, atty.," Hammer drew up a divorce petition for the happily married Campbells. He stamped the application with a notary's stamp, paid the $11 filing fee and waited the legal six weeks. Then he slipped the form into a stack of similar papers in the divorce court.

White-haired little Common Pleas Judge Samuel H. Silbert, who has ruled on 35,000 divorce cases in 25 years on the bench, unhesitatingly scrawled his signature on the fake petition. From first to last there was no hearing.

Judge Silbert found out what he had done last week in the Press story under an eight-column, Page One banner: FAKE CASE PROVES DIVORCE EASY. Wrote Reporter Hammer: "I believe [Judge Silbert] would have signed the paper if it appointed me President Truman's guardian." The Press followed up his story with a front-page editorial condemning "assembly line" justice.

Cried Judge Silbert: "A dirty trick! .. . I can't read 200 [divorce decrees] a week. I sign whatever is placed before me ... I've got to trust the attaches of this court. . ." The judge soon cooled off and wanted to forget the whole thing. But the local bar associations demanded that Reporter Hammer be punished.

At week's end, supercharged little Press Editor Louis Seltzer (TIME, Aug. 9) was cited for contempt, and ordered to appear in court this week before his old friend Judge Silbert. So were City Editor Louis Clifford, Reporter Hammer, and the Campbells. For a time it had looked as if the Campbells would have other troubles. Fake or not, Hammer's petition had legally divorced them and efforts to get another marriage license were thwarted by an angry Cleveland judge. Editor Seltzer solved that. He sent them to Angola, Indiana, for a remarriage and second honeymoon--at Press expense.

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