The Media By TOM LITTLEWOOD

What price justice?

JOURNALISTS throughout the nation continue to be deeply troubled by the way in which Illinois justice operated to threaten the very existence of a newspaper with a long and proud history — the Alton Telegraph. Frustrated by their inability to obtain a fair hearing at the appeal stage, the owners of the Telegraph gave up the fight this summer. They agreed to pay more than $1.4 million to the people who had sued for libel because of unpublished information given government investigators in 1969. In the only case that went to trial, a jury in Madison County awarded an astonishing $9.2 million in damages (including $2.5 million of "punitive" damages) against the newspaper.

Editors everywhere might be expected to be alarmed by the intimidating effect of this chain of events (many of them involving the dominant political organization in the St. Louis Metro East area) on the voice of the Alton paper. What is more surprising, though, is that the entire "outrageous spectacle," the words used in Telegraph lawyer Philip W. Tone's appellate brief, has not resulted in a new public outcry for judicial reform in Illinois.

For the newspaper's brush with the state judicial system is a reminder of how judges still are chosen here in partisan elections.

To be endorsed by the Democratic party of Madison County for election to a judgeship, candidates customarily contribute $10,000 to the party, according to a recent series by Bill Lambrecht in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The candidates then recover this and more in campaign contributions from the lawyers who practice before them. Lambrecht depicted a few highly successful plaintiffs' lawyers as the new political power brokers in Metro East. Personal injury suits are "a multi-million dollar hidden industry" there, he said. Plaintiffs flock from all over the country to sue in Madison County, where judgments average twice the state average.

There can be few illusions about the rough brand of politics in Madison and St. Clair counties. "Any newspaper that does its job covering local government here is going to antagonize the political machine," explained Stephen A. Cousley, the fourth generation of Cousley editors of the Telegraph.

The Telegraph's ordeal began in 1969 when two reporters were checking tips from the sheriff's office that Mafia money was involved in the savings and loan association financing of a real estate development. Instead of doing the irresponsible thing and rushing into print with unverified allegations from anonymous sources, the reporters were asked by the organized crime section of the Justice Department to give the information to them. Ordinarily any communication from a citizen to a prosecuting attorney about possible criminal activities is "privileged," or protected, against an action for defamation.

When the matter was called to the attention of federal home loan bank regulators, they investigated the S & L. As a consequence, for reasons apart from those mentioned by the reporters, the developer lost his source of credit and went out of business. Years later, he found out about the memo and in 1977 he sued for libel.

Early in 1980, a former personal injury lawyer in the area who had been appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to a Circuit Court judicial vacancy — Charles W. Chapman — visited the offices of the Telegraph to solicit its editorial endorsement of his candidacy for election to a full term. This occurred while the libel suit was on his docket awaiting trial. The Telegraph refrained from endorsements in that judicial primary, in which, as it turned out, Chapman was defeated. Thus he presided over the jury trial as a

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lameduck. On his last day in office, November 26, 1980, he entered an order denying Tone's motion to overturn the jury's verdict. The following month the Supreme Court returned Chapman to the bench by appointment to another vacancy on the same court, where he now sits.

For the next 18 months, the Telegraph tried to get a higher court to listen while the lawyers quarreled over jurisdictional and other technicalities — and while the legal fees mounted. First, the newspaper found that it could not appeal the decision without posting bond 1^1/2 times the size of the judgment — more than $13 million. With libel insurance of only $1 million, the Telegraph could not do that. A request to the Supreme Court that the paper be permitted to pledge its fixed assets as security, instead of a bond, was refused.

Then, with the judgment hanging over it, the newspaper had no choice but to protect its assets temporarily by filing in federal court for corporate reorganization under the bankruptcy laws. Even then, a three-judge panel on the 5th district state Appellate Court in Mount Vernon would not listen to the appeal. Although the bankruptcy judge said three different times that the libel issue belonged in the state courts, the state appellate judges ruled differently.

The state court would not even require a reply brief from the plaintiff until the financial questions were settled; and the bankruptcy judge would not take up the libel points. Meanwhile, the reorganization plan suggested by the plaintiffs was on target: they proposed to take over the paper. "Our main concern was keeping the paper running," Cousley said later. "The tremendous cost of defense was eating us alive, and even then there was the danger of winding up losing the whole business." He estimated that legal fees from start to finish could amount to as much as $600,000 — of which $200,000 was reimbursed by the libel insurance company. The cost of the cash settlement in excess of the $1 million covered by insurance was borrowed by the newspaper from a local bank, thus enabling the Telegraph to survive.

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