This got my lawyer’s hackles raised.
In Today’s New London Day I noticed an article titled as follows:
Bankruptcy court: Lighthouse Inn filing invalid
The clear implication–nay, not implication, but the explicit statement- is that the Bankruptcy Court has ruled that the Lighthouse Inn’s bankruptcy filing was invalid. It’s made even more explicit by this caption atop the conclusion of the article on the next page in the print edition: Lighthouse Inn ruled ‘a debtor in bad faith’.
There is one teensy weensy problem with these headlines, as the article makes clear. The bankruptcy court has not yet ruled, and will not do so until Thursday at the earliest. The attorney for the Inn’s major creditor has filed a motion seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the Inn’s filing was in bad faith, and based on the quotes from the filing, it sounds like he may succeed. But he hasn’t yet:
Sheehan has asked that the Chapter 11 petition be dismissed and converted into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would call for the immediate liquidation of Lighthouse Inn assets.
The next hearing in the case being heard by Chief Judge Albert S. Dabrowski will be at 10 a.m. Nov. 12 in Room 715B at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford.
As I understand the way the newspaper business works, you can’t blame the reporter for this sloppiness. They don’t write the headlines. But someone over there is getting paid (presumably) to do so, and it isn’t asking too much that such person reads and understands the article before penning the titles.
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