Decisions & Verdicts: Of Fright, Nudists & Spinsters

DECISIONS & VERDICTS

Every day, every week, U.S. courts resolve individual human conflicts — the stuff of the law that governs everyone else. Current examples:

¶ One spinster can adopt another — at least in Maryland. For reasons of "in heritance and maternal feeling," un married WAC Sergeant Dorothy Libertini, 56, sought to adopt unmarried WAC Captain Frances Hagler, 35. A Baltimore court denied the petition, reasoning that Captain Hagler would, in effect, become a spinster's "illegitimate" daughter. Not so, ruled the Maryland Court of Appeals. Unmarried adults can adopt persons of any age for purposes of inheritance, and the result does not change the "social or domestic relation ship of either party." Moreover, a probation officer's report in the Libertini case "gives no intimation of wrongdoing or improper motive."

¶Some commuting expenses are deductible on federal income-tax returns.

New York City Construction Worker Lawrence D. Sullivan drove his car to work and deducted $1,494.72 for one year's expenses, claiming that he had to drive to get his 32-lb. bag of wire lathing tools to distant jobs. The tax court disagreed, citing the general rule that job-commuting is no deductible business expense. But a U.S. Appellate Court upheld Sullivan, ruling that he can deduct "that portion of his reason able driving expenses which is allocable to the transportation of tools." This means only cumbersome tools, such as a musician's drums or a lumberjack's sawing equipment, both of which were cleared in two prior cases. Not a thin briefcase.

¶A murder accomplice may get a life sentence while the alleged killers escape trial. Aristides Benitez Jr., 18, confessed that he and two other youths planned to hold up a Hartford grocer, but that he lost his nerve and stayed in the car while they attacked and killed the victim. Benitez was convicted of first-degree murder under the common rule that makes an accomplice equally culpable of the crime. But, except for Benitez' confession, evidence to convict his buddies was lacking. Because Benitez refused to testify against the other youths and his implicating statements against them were inadmissible as hearsay evidence, Benitez' pals are thus far immune from prosecution.

¶Life insurance is payable for death caused by fright. When the 1964 earthquake hit Alaska, 100-ft-plus waves hurled the freighter Chena into the seaport town of Valdez and so terrified Third Mate Ralph Thompson that he died of a heart attack. The insurance company refused to pay Mrs. Thompson's $25,000 claim, citing the fact that the policy covered only death from "bodily injury caused by accident," not death from fright. In upholding Mrs. Thompson, a U.S. Appellate Court ruled that such a policy applies even when the victim dies from fear of an accident that is actually avoided — for example, a threatened head-on auto crash. In Thompson's case, said the court, fear was the "predominant factor" that weakened his heart, and his widow gets the money.