| The Second
World War changed the City in concrete ways.
The state of war, and its complicating effect on issues
of ownership and commerce, resonated in cases before
the Appellate Division. Individuals pressed to regain
money they had left in European banks, now under Nazi
occupation. Transatlantic shipping companies sought
legal recourse for shipping contracts, now broken, that
had been made before the war.There were domestic questions
as well. In New York, the Appellate Division held that
city firemen who enlisted in the armed forces were entitled
to job protection and other benefits. Anti-German sentiment
caused the Court to reverse a criminal conviction, on
the grounds that the prosecution used prejudice in painting
the defendant as a Nazi sympathizer. One New York attorney
was disbarred for extorting money from men subject to
the draft, promising to get them “safe”
positions in the Army. When the war was finally over,
and its end celebrated in Times Square, the Court was
left to deal with questions involving the rights of
war veterans.
Through the 1930's and 1940's newspaper columnists
such as Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan had created
“The Cult of Celebrity,” writing daily items
about the rich and famous in New York. Frequently the
target of libel suits, both columnists, among the most
widely-read newspapermen in the country, were eventually
broadcast on radio and television. Their barbed prose
often led to litigation and celebrated feuds.
The new media concentration on the famous and notorious
led to one suit by President Roosevelt’s son-in-law
against Time, Inc., which had printed a story about
the man’s alleged suicide attempt, and another
by an attorney whom a radio commentator had allegedly
called “a crooked lawyer mouthpiece.”
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