Verdicts

> In Trenton, after pointing out that many a man has been fooled by female cosmetics, a New Jersey state court acquitted a saloonkeeper who had been charged with having broken the law by employing two barmaids who were under 21. Said the court: "Only the most naive would be unaware of the countless female aids which flood the marketplace, which permit one to appear older or younger."

> In Manila, a city court ordered Pan American World Airways to pay $41,310 damages to four Filipinos because the airline had switched their reservations from first class to tourist on a flight to the U.S. The offended passengers, Senator Fernando Lopez and three members of his family, charged that Pan Am gave their seats to white passengers. In rejecting Pan Am's plea that the reservation mixup was an "honest mistake," the judge paid the airline a left-handed compliment: he could not believe, he said, that Pan Am, which advertises itself as the "world's most experienced airline," could make such a mistake unintentionally.

> In Cincinnati, a race-track tout named Keith Harold Robinson was found not guilty of trespassing at River Downs track. Robinson, said the court, was not on the premises illegally; he had paid for a two-dollar ticket of admission. For the track, and for the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, the verdict made a major problem out of a minor incident: Robinson filed a $100,000 suit for damages. While he was held for six days on the trespassing charge, he said, "his loyal and faithful dog," an 18-year-old mongrel named Skeeter, "was left unattended and, as a direct result, suffered a stroke."

> In Stuttgart, West Germany, Army Private Freddie Lowe Johnson, 21, became the first member of the U.S. armed forces to be tried in a German court under the U.S.-German status-of-forces agreement that went into effect July 1. The crime: robbing a bank at gunpoint. The punishment: 3 1/2 years in prison, which is a gentler sentence than he would probably have received if he were found guilty by a U.S. military court. Pentagon spokesmen testifying before a Senate subcommittee reported that U.S. servicemen tried in foreign courts tend to get mild sentences. Japan has even built a special prison for U.S. prisoners, with much more comfortable accommodations than those provided for Japanese convicts.

> In Atlanta, the Georgia Supreme Court threw out the conviction and one-year prison sentence of an Atlanta alderman who had been found guilty of accepting a $1,750 "present" intended to influence his vote in a zoning case. Georgia, the court declared with obvious embarrassment, has no law making it a crime for a municipal official to accept a bribe.

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