Legal Briefs

WATERGATE LEAK. In the 19th century U.S. Supreme Court Justices talked openly about impending decisions, but in recent years the court has shrouded its decision-making process with an almost impenetrable secrecy. The purpose, its members say, is to encourage a frank and free interchange of ideas. Even staff members are barred from the Justices' conferences. So there was considerable embarrassment inside the pillared courthouse after National Public Radio Correspondent Nina Totenberg, 33, revealed that the court had tentatively decided, 5 to 3, to reject Watergate cover-up-conviction petitions filed by John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman and John Mitchell, and that Chief Justice Warren Burger was lobbying members of the majority to hear their arguments (TIME, May 2). Attorneys for the defense suggested that the news leak, which Totenberg claims originated with "seven separate sources," may have prejudiced their clients' chances by freezing the Justices in place. They asked for permission to explain their position in a supplementary brief. Last week the high court formally rejected that suggestion without dissent or comment. A final decision on the petitions has been delayed until at least next week.

LOOK'S LIBEL. When Look magazine accused San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto in 1969 of being "enmeshed in a web of alliances with ... La Cosa Nostra," Alioto filed a libel suit for $12.5 million. The story, plus other legal troubles (a federal mail-fraud indictment against Alioto was dropped, and he won a civil suit over allegedly improper legal fees), helped to undermine the mayor's ambitions for the California governorship. But three times the libel case went to trial (in 1970, '72, '76), and three times the juries could not agree.

Alioto wearily lowered his sights. He reduced his claims to $500,000, for "loss of reputation, mortification and hurt feelings," and offered the case to a judge sitting without jury. Last week U.S. District Judge William W. Schwarzer found the now defunct magazine had shown "reckless disregard" for damaging inaccuracies in the article by Freelancers Richard Carlson and Lance Brisson. He awarded Alioto a judgment of $350,000 plus court costs (estimated at about $50,000). Said Alioto: "How sweet it is." Cowles Communications Inc., which published Look, is now primarily an investment firm headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., and all but $25,000 of the judgment liability is covered by the Employers Reinsurance Corp. That firm has authorized an appeal.

FIGHTING PANIC. If blacks begin buying houses in a previously white community, what can be done to discourage panic selling by white homeowners? Officials of Willingboro, N.J. (pop. 45,000), staged a town meeting in March 1973 to discuss the question, and one speaker advocated a ban on FOR SALE signs in front yards. A year later the town council passed the idea into law. The ordinance actually had little effect on housing sales, but a real estate agent challenged it, and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck it down last week. The First Amendment prohibits restrictions on "the free flow of truthful commercial information," wrote Thurgood Marshall, the court's only black Justice. While the ordinance was aimed at "the vital goal" of "promoting stable, racially integrated housing," the court ruled, the censoring of such basic information would enable "every locality in the country [to] suppress any facts that reflect poorly on the locality."

IRS HIGH JINKS. On a visit to Miami in 1973, Banker Michael Wolstencroft got a date with a woman through the good offices of an acquaintance, Norman Casper. While the two were at dinner, Casper entered the woman's apartment and snatched Wolstencroft's briefcase containing the names of some 300 American depositors in Wolstencroft's bank in the Bahamas. Casper, an undercover informant for the Internal Revenue Service, took the case to an IRS agent, who photocopied the contents. This was all part of an unorthodox IRS investigation known as Project Haven, which was aimed at Caribbean financial high jinks. One of the alleged depositors, listed in the copied documents as having a $100,000 account, was a self-described retired investor, Jack Payner, of Cleveland. He was subsequently indicted on a charge of having falsely sworn on his 1972 tax return that he had no foreign bank account. Now U.S. District Judge John M. Manos of Cleveland has thrown out the evidence against Payner--and possibly the evidence against dozens of other defendants involved in Project Haven. Manos declared that the IRS agents' conduct was "outrageous ... They plotted, schemed and ultimately acted, knowing that their conduct was illegal."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.