Fugitives: Monstrous Mackerel

For 32 months, Harlem’s Democratic Congressman Adam Clayton Powell has taxed more than 70 judges with his legal evasions of a $46,500 defamation judgment won by Mrs. Esther James, a widow whom Powell slandered on TV as a “bag woman” for gambling payoffs. Last week acting New York State Supreme Court Justice Maurice Wahl rewarded Powell’s “monstrous defiance of the law” by awarding Mrs. James the whopping sum of $575,000.

A year ago, Mrs. James charged that Powell evaded attachment for the judgment by fraudulently transferring title to his $50,000 house in Puerto Rico to his wife’s aunt and uncle. Twice, Powell ignored fact-finding trials. Last week, forced to assume that the charge was true, Justice Wahl ordered Powell to pay Mrs. James $75,000 in compensatory and $500,000 in punitive damages. Summing up his opinion of Powell, Justice Wahl indignantly paraphrased a famous insult attributed to Virginia’s 19th century Senator John Randolph: “He is a man of splendid abilities, but he shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.”