Defiance in Detroit

"The honorable judges of the Federal District Court for eastern Michigan are hereby given notice," thundered Detroit's evening News (circ. 468,540). "They will shortly have to bring contempt proceedings against the editor of the Detroit News." Whereupon it tried to give the court a chance to do so by running an account of a civil-damage suit in apparent defiance of a court order suppressing the record of the case.

Since Detroit's two other papers ran similar stories, their concerted defiance promptly blew up into a national journalistic cause celebre. Never before had the loftily independent News, John S. Knight's crusading Free Press (circ. 498,912), and Hearst's scrappy but third-ranking Times (circ. 385,908) shown such editorial solidarity. Encouragement flowed in from all over, even from the bench: "The court's business is the public business," said Federal District Judge Arthur F. Lederle, who, convalescing in a Detroit hospital, had taken no part in the suppression order. Michigan's Republican Representative Clare Hoffman thought Congress should investigate.

The case in question was hardly likely to involve the public interest. Last February, probing a shortage in its books, a Detroit architectural engineering firm sued a former partner for an accounting, asked Federal District Judge Theodore Levin to suppress the record in order to spare embarrassment to those directly involved. Levin did, holding that the court has the "inherent right" to suppress any case. After the shortage--nearly $1,000,000--was publicly revealed with the arrest of the firm's former head bookkeeper (TIME, Dec. 21), Detroit papers decided to make an issue of the suppression of the civil suit.

Instead of finding the newspapers in contempt, Judge Levin merely issued a statement observing that they were not. The stories published about the suit did not come from court records--as the papers themselves admitted--but from sources over which the court had no control. While holding to the suppression of the record at this time, Levin said that all hearings on the case will be held in open court.

Thus left without a cause, the Free Press and the Times were inclined to drop the subject. But not the News, which was still troubled by the court's "inherent right" claim. "We learn with regret: we're not in contempt," it editorialized last week. "We will try to violate the suppression rule to the judge's satisfaction, and thus get the question on the proper road to settlement by a higher court."

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