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Tuesday, September 13, 1977
University Daily Kansan
S.W. Bell convicted in slander-suicide suit
SAN ANTONIO—A state jury yesterday found that Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. landed two former executives, compelling one to commit suicide in a 1974 investigation. The jury awarded $3 million in damages.
The injury, in a 10-2 decision, found in a complex 35-point verdict that the company investigation wrongly drove T. O. Gravitt, Bell's Texas vice president charge of 34,000 employees, suicide in算理, 1974, at the conclusion of the investigation. It awarded Gravitt's widow, Oleta Gravitt Dixon, $1.5 million.
James H. Ashley, Gravitt's friend who was fired two weeks after Gravitt's death from his $55,000-a-year job as San Antonio commercial manager, also was awarded $1.5 million on the grounds that the company slandered him during the investigation.
"THIS PROVES that everyone is equal under the law, small and large." Ashley told reporters outside the courtroom. "I don't apologize for saying I was the Ralph Nader of the telephone industry. I will continue to contribute to the benefit of the Bell consumer any way I can. I feel a strong sense of justice."
Bell attorneys began studying the jury's verdict for errors and said they would appeal the decision if 186th District Judge Peter Michael Currley rendered a judgment based on the jury's verdict. They contended that the jurors might have committed an error that would nullify the money award to Ashley.
"Atheism was definitely a misreducption of justice," C. L. Todd, Bell's San Antonio vice president and general manager, said. "Three years of publicity given this case caused the decision. We said from the outset it would be difficult to get a fair trial in San Antonio and we feel that this decision bears this out."
ALTHOUGH THE jury found mostly in favor of Ashley and Dixon, is exonerated codefendant American Telephone and Telegraph Co., Southernwest Bell's parent firm, of any damages, and it declined to award any money to Gravitt's sons, Michael and Patrick. It also reduced the lawsuit's original request for $29 million in damages.
U.S. mediates border fighting in S. Lebanon
BEIRUT-Fierce fighting wracked Lebanon's southern border region yesterday, and the United States worked to defuse the situation there in intermediary talks with the Arabs.
In the southeast, Israeli planes overflight combat zones repeatedly as long-range Israeli artillery provided support for Christian rightists who were Palestinian guerrilla members Lebanese leftists in the north, according to a Lebanese correspondent on the scene.
corresponding.
Paskalian and leftist sources reported from Palestine were killed and another 17 wounded since Sunday, but no casualty toll was available from the rightist enclaves, which are sealed off to outside access, except from Israel.
IN BERHUT, U.S. Charge d'Affaires George Lane met with Foreign Minister Fud Butros. Lane and Butros told reporters that Washington's southern region they deployed to elaborate.
The United States has been acting in what American diplomats like to describe as the role of conduit, or as a channel, between Israel and the Arabs on the south Lebanon.
"All we are trying to do is make sure that both sides are fully informed of each other's position so that nothing unexpected happens," one diplomat said.
Lebanese authorities have been working on arranging a Palestinian withdrawal from the immediate border area so that Lebanese troops could move in to police a caisee-in the region, which has been the scene of sporadic clashes for nearly a year.
RECENT CONTACTS apparently have centered on Israel's position on the proposed movement of Lebanese troops into the disputed area.
The latest round of fighting was primarily between the Christian rightist enclaves of Marajouan and Kleia and surrounding Palestinian-left forces in the eastern Raya al. Foolhar, the Hasbanin River basin and the inland market town of Nabatieh.
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The only point decided in Southwestern Bell's favor was the jury's ordering Mrs. Dixon, now married to an Oklahoma olman, to reimburse the telephone company $1,771.56 for a false voucher Gravitt submitted. Testimony indicated that the executive attended a meeting with the White man he was present at the Greater San Antonio Commerce, then collected from both the Chamber and Southern Bell for the expenses.
Ashley, having himself to consumer advocate Ralph Nader, filed the lawsuit two weeks after he was fired. He and Gravitt were harassed by company investigators because, he said, they were opposing widespread illegal wiretapping, political donations and inflated telephone rates in Texas.
TEXT
BELL COUNTERED by saying the investigation started because the two men were sexually promiscuous with female Bell employees and were swindling the company with false expense vouches. Fifteen women Bell employees presented companies in the city to Ashley and Gravitt teachers who handed out promotions in exchange for sexual favors.
Dixon, whose husband worked for Bell 31 years before his death, told reporters she might write a book about alleged wrongdoing by the giant utility.
"It will never all come out and that's a shame," Dixon said. "I may write a book some day."
KENT, Ohio -The 6th U.S. Court of Appellia officially reopened the seven-year-old Kent State shootings case yesterday, orderday, and more than a million suit filed by parents of the victims against Ohio Gov James A. Rhodes and others.
But, in another decision on a current matter of controversy, the Cincinnati court refused to block construction of a gym on the campus near the site of the shootings. Angry protestors have been demanding all summer that the gym be replaced by a national historical monument.
The general contractor hired to build the gym. Monday his crew would begin moving onto the campus to begin construction "sometime this week."
Both matters stem from the May 4, 1970, shooting deaths of four students by Ohio National Guardms ordered onto campus
PARENTS OF THE FOUR students, along with nine persons wounded by the gunfire, went to court in Cleveland two years ago, seeking $46 million in damages from Rhodes, former Kent State President Robert White and National Guard officials. A 15-week trial resulted in jury acquittals for all the defendants.
by Rhodes to quell an antiVietnam war protest.
During the past two years, the victims and the parents of the slain students have been working on a massive appeal of the case, and were successful Monday in winning a plea.
s Kent State shooting su
"We conclude that the plaintiffs (parents and shooting victims) are entitled to a new trial because the verdict was returned by a jury, at least one of whose members had been acquitted or acquitted in the trial by a person interested in its outcome," the appellate court ruled.
THE APPELLATE COURT noted the
threats were related to the upcoming verdict in the case, that the trial judge did not interrogate juror to learn what effect the bad judgment had on the jury, and that the jury remained on the panel.
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SYSTEM REQUEST The rehearing request was denied Monday, and with it went the temporary block against construction.
The court last month ruled against gym protestors in the overall issue of whether the gym should be halted, but had temporarily allowed the protestors to be halftimed. The protestors request for a rehearing.
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In the gymnasium issue, the appellate court tossed out two requests to halt construction of the controversial building.
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©1977 Texas Instruments Incorporated
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