Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERIOR DECORATING (78%); PHOTOGRAPHY SERVICES (75%); REALITY TELEVISION (73%); FURNITURE STORES (67%); PHOTOGRAPHY (64%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (67%) NEW YORK, USA (67%) UNITED STATES (67%)
TITLE: Myles of Style (TV Program)>; Myles of Style (TV Program)>
LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

936 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 27, 2008 Thursday

The New York Times on the Web

Needed: Efficient Power
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTER; Pg.
LENGTH: 224 words
To the Editor:

Re ''States' Battles Over Energy Grow Fiercer With U.S. in a Policy Gridlock'' (''The Energy Challenge'' series, March 20):

Proponents of coal-fired power argue falsely that coal is cheap. Coal is a cheap fuel. But who cares? Coal can't run an iPod. And electricity from coal -- which also includes fuel, maintenance and capital recovery costs -- is expensive.

Indeed, no one is building coal plants without first securing regulatory guarantees of equity recovery. But when we guarantee that equity, we commit to significant electric rate increases -- in the name of cheap coal.

We have cheaper and cleaner options: Co-generation and energy recycling have the potential to generate 40 percent of our nation's electricity, slashing power costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

But our regulations, which reward monopoly utilities for investing capital, but provide no reward should they find ways to generate cheaper power, are blind to these opportunities.

Worse, they impose barriers to entrepreneurs who would otherwise build these projects with private capital. We can do better. And we don't need dirty, expensive power.

We need to confront the elephant in the room: a regulatory model that is hostile to efficient power generation.

Sean Casten President, Recycled Energy Development Westmont, Ill., March 20, 2008
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LETTERS & COMMENTS (90%); COAL FIRED PLANTS (90%); NATURAL GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (90%); FOSSIL FUEL POWER PLANTS (90%); EMISSIONS (78%); ENERGY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS (78%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (78%); COAL INDUSTRY (77%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (74%); POWER COGENERATION (73%); UTILITY RATES (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (70%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Letter
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

937 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 26, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Foreign Courts Wary of U.S. Punitive Damages
BYLINE: By ADAM LIPTAK
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; AMERICAN EXCEPTION; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1493 words
In the late summer of 1985, Kurt Parrott, a 15-year-old who loved baseball and Pac-Man, was thrown from his motorcycle in Opelika, Ala. The buckle of his helmet failed, and he died when his bare head hit the pavement. Mr. Parrott's mother sued the Italian company that made the helmet, and an Alabama court awarded her $1 million.

The company refused to pay. And last year, when lawyers for the Parrott family tried to collect in Italy, they were blocked by the Italian Supreme Court.

The court said that a peculiarity of American law -- punitive damages -- was so offensive to Italian notions of justice that it would not enforce the Alabama judgment.

Most of the rest of the world views the idea of punitive damages with alarm. As the Italian court explained, private lawsuits brought by injured people should have only one goal -- compensation for a loss. Allowing separate awards meant to punish the defendant, foreign courts say, is a terrible idea.

Punishments, they say, should be meted out only by the criminal justice system, with its elaborate due process protections and disinterested prosecutors. It is not fair, they add, to give plaintiffs a windfall beyond what they have lost. And the ad hoc opinions of a jury, they say, are a poor substitute for the considered judgments of government safety regulators.

Some common-law countries do allow punitive damages, though in limited circumstances and modest amounts. In the United States, by contrast, enormous punitive awards are relatively common, although they are often reduced or eliminated on appeal. Last month, for instance, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the Exxon Valdez case, where a jury's initial award of $5 billion was later reduced to $2.5 billion.

Still, such awards terrify foreign courts.

''The U.S. practice of permitting a lay jury to exercise largely discretionary judgment with limited constraints in awarding punitive damages is regarded almost universally outside the U.S. with a high degree of disfavor,'' said Gary Born, an American lawyer who works in London.

Foreign lawyers and judges are quick to cite particularly large American awards. Julian Lew, a barrister in London, recalled a Mississippi court's $400 million punitive award against a Canadian company in 1995 with scorn. ''It did bring America into total and utter contempt around the world,'' Mr. Lew said.

Yet there are signs that the gap between the United States and the rest of the world is narrowing, as American courts and legislatures start to limit punitive awards and other countries start to experiment with them.

Punitive damages have deep roots in American and English common law, but their nature has changed here over time. ''Until well into the 19th century,'' Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court wrote in 2001, ''punitive damages frequently operated to compensate for intangible injuries'' like pain and suffering or emotional distress.

These days, driven by the structure of the American civil justice system, entrepreneurial plaintiffs' lawyers and the populism they embrace, punitive damages are used to send messages to large corporations, to fill gaps in regulation and to reward successful plaintiffs with multiples of what they have lost. Distinctive features of the American legal system -- civil juries, class actions, contingency fees and the requirement that each side bear its own lawyers' fees -- all play a role in amplifying punitive damages.

Punitive damages are so embedded in the American legal system that the rationale for them is rarely explored. One of the best explanations came from a German Supreme Court decision in 1992, which said the concept had four main purposes: to punish the offender for ''uncivilized conduct,'' to deter the offender and others from doing similar things, to reward the plaintiff for enforcing the law and so improve ''general law and order,'' and to supplement inadequate compensatory damages.

The case decided by the German court, like the one involving Kurt Parrott, was an effort to enforce a judgment from an American court against a defendant who had no assets in this country and refused to pay. Ordinarily, it is a relatively routine matter to ask a foreign court to enforce an American court judgment. Not so when punitive damages are involved, even where the conduct in question is shocking.

The German case, for instance, involved sexual abuse. In 1985, a state court in Stockton, Calif., entered a $750,000 judgment, including $400,000 in punitive damages, against Eckhard Schmitz for abusing a 13-year-old boy. Mr. Schmitz would not pay, and he fled to Germany while he was appealing a 13-year criminal sentence for engaging in sex with other teenage boys.

But the German court nonetheless said that the dangers of allowing punitive awards outweighed the benefits. The plaintiff should not get a windfall, the court said, and should not be allowed to act as a '' 'private public prosecutor' infringing the German state's monopoly on punishment with its associated safeguards.''

The German court did enforce the $350,000 compensatory award. The Italian court, by contrast, refused to enforce any of the $1 million award to Kurt Parrott's mother because the Alabama judge had not said how much of it was for compensation and how much for punishment.

But ''the tide may be about to change,'' John Y. Gotanda, a law professor at Villanova, wrote last year in The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. ''Traditional hostility to American awards of such damages may be dissipating.''

That is partly a consequence of changes here. American courts and legislatures are experimenting with ways to limit punitive damages, often in response to lobbying and litigation from business groups that say huge punitive awards are arbitrary, unfair and hurt the American economy.

Five states -- Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Washington -- ban or severely limit punitive damages. Others restrict the amounts awarded. Some states, responding to the criticism that the awards are a windfall for the plaintiffs, require that a part be turned over to the states.

The United States Supreme Court has in the last decade or so started to impose its own limits. In 1996, it ruled that a $2 million punitive award in an Alabama consumer fraud case involving a $4,000 compensatory award was excessive, given that the harm was merely economic, far exceeded the maximum punishment the state could have imposed and was disproportionate to the compensatory award.

In 2003, the court said that the ratio between punitive and compensatory awards must typically be in the single digits to be constitutional. It struck down a $145 million punitive award in an insurance fraud case where the compensatory damages had been $1 million.

At the same time, courts in a few countries around the world are expanding the availability of punitive damages.

The Tribunal Supremo in Spain, for instance, enforced a $1.3 million punitive award in a Texas trademark and unfair competition case in 2001. The Supreme Court of South Australia in 2005 indicated that it would consider enforcing American punitive awards where they involved ''brazen and fraudulent conduct.''

Perhaps most notably, the Canadian Supreme Court in 2003 upheld a $50,000 punitive award in a Florida land dispute, saying it ''does not violate our principles of morality.''

Justice Louis LeBel explained, with an air of resignation, why this was so, saying there was nothing in the American approach that was inherently offensive to Canadian ideas of basic fairness.

''Itis simply a different policy choice,'' he wrote, ''and it affords U.S. plaintiffs a level of protection of which they ought not necessarily to be deprived just because the defendant's assets are here.''

Even in Germany, which flatly rejected an American punitive award in 1992, there are signs of change, said Franco Ferrari, a law professor at the University of Verona in Italy. ''The traditional compensatory regime has been permeated by punitive elements,'' he said.

In cases involving a fake interview with Princess Caroline of Monaco, intellectual property and employment discrimination, he said, German courts have started to award damages that seem to be meant to punish as well as compensate.

Kurt Parrott's mother, Judy Glebosky, learned about the Italian Supreme Court's decision from a reporter. Her lawyers had turned the matter over to an international collection agency and had not bothered to tell her that she had lost.

The case seemed simple to her.

''I bought Kurt a helmet that was supposed to be the best,'' Ms. Glebosky said. ''It did not perform, and I lost Kurt.''

Questions about punitive damages seemed academic to her, if not heartless.

''A million-dollar award is really nothing,'' she said. ''It's really not enough to punish any large company in this day and age, and it certainly does not bring back Kurt.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LITIGATION (94%); DAMAGES (92%); PUNITIVE DAMAGES (92%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (90%); SUITS & CLAIMS (90%); JURY TRIAL (89%); APPEALS (89%); LAWYERS (89%); DECISIONS & RULINGS (77%); SETTLEMENTS & DECISIONS (77%); CRIMINAL LAW (76%); BARRISTERS & SOLICITORS (76%); LEGISLATORS (75%); MOTOR VEHICLES (73%); JUDGES (71%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (71%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (65%); SUPREME COURTS (89%); JURY TRIALS (89%)
PERSON: JOHN PAUL STEVENS (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (90%) ALABAMA, USA (94%); MISSISSIPPI, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (98%); ITALY (90%); ENGLAND (90%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%)
LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Italian courts refused to enforce a judgment Judy Glebosky won in America after her son died. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSICA MCGOWAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg.A20)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Series
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

938 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 26, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Volunteering Abroad to Climb at I.B.M.
BYLINE: By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 747 words
In July, a team of 8 to 10 I.B.M. employees will travel to Ghana to help tiny businesses make their operations more professional. Another team will help entrepreneurs seek microloans in Turkey, while yet another will create training programs on information technology in Vietnam.

The projects, which were devised by I.B.M.'s citizenship group and are being coordinated through nonprofit organizations, have all the trappings of corporate philanthropy. But that is not why they were created, or how they are being used.

''This is a management development exercise for high-potential people at I.B.M.,'' said Randy MacDonald, senior vice president for human resources.

Many multinational companies insist that promising executives do stints in their overseas offices. And many will free employees to do pro bono work at community organizations. But I.B.M.'s program, which it calls the Corporate Service Corps, stands out on several counts. It uses the volunteer ethos to bring together employees who might otherwise never meet, even as it gives I.B.M. a high profile in countries where it does not yet have a significant presence.

''I.B.M. doesn't have a big footprint in a lot of these places,'' said Kevin B. Thompson, the senior program manager in corporate citizenship who is running the Service Corps project. ''And their experiences will be a lot more useful than research that says, say, that the Internet has a 12.7 percent penetration rate.''

Management experts say I.B.M. is onto something.

''As a development tool, this is a four-for-one,'' said Allan R. Cohen, dean of the Olin Graduate School at Babson College, near Boston. ''It's stretching to work in another culture, to work in a nonprofit where the measurement of accomplishment isn't clear, to take a sabbatical from your everyday routine and to learn to accomplish things when you can't just bark orders.''

Indeed, Paul Ingram, a management professor at the Columbia Business School, is planning a similar program for this fall, in which executives attending the school's Senior Executive Program will work with nonprofit groups in New York. Because 80 percent of the students are not from the United States, the New York location is outside their comfort zone.

''The fact that you are an excellent programmer or salesman, or can lead a project in your own area and culture, doesn't mean you can be a great leader outside of your technical or cultural expertise,'' he said.

That is I.B.M.'s logic as well. The company views the Service Corps as a way to learn how well employees work with strangers, in strange lands, on unfamiliar projects. And it plans to use that knowledge to customize further development programs for the participants.

Clearly, the Service Corps concept sits well with the I.B.M. employees. More than 5,500 of them, from more than 50 countries, applied for the program. I.B.M. narrowed the pool to those who had been designated as fast-trackers, who had familiarity with volunteerism and who submitted the best short essays on how participation would help them develop as leaders. The applications of those that passed that first cut were sent to the heads of I.B.M.'s eight geographic regions, who chose which of their employees to send.

The final list comprises 100 people from 33 countries, who will form 12 teams that will be deployed to projects in Romania, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Ghana and Tanzania. I.B.M. said it would select another 100 before the end of the year and have a total of 600 participants over the next three years.

The first projects will not begin until July, but the team members are expected to immediately begin studying the countries they will visit and their cultures.

They will also begin interacting with one another, possibly through a virtual venue, similar to Second Life, that I.B.M. will set up. Each team will have electronic ''facilitators,'' executives who are well versed in the countries they will visit and the types of businesses they will be advising.

After their four-week trips, the participants will go through two months of intensive debriefing to discuss what they learned about leadership -- and about the countries they visited.

''It feels good to help in a developing country, even as you enhance your career,'' said Julie T. Lockwood, 31, a supply chain manager at I.B.M. in Boulder, Colo., who will be on the Ghana team. ''This will help my internal resume more than an assignment in a developed country.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (89%); CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (78%); CORPORATE GIVING (78%); HUMAN RESOURCES (78%); EDUCATION (77%); CHARITIES (76%); PHILANTHROPY (71%); MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS (69%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (68%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (89%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (92%) GHANA (93%); UNITED STATES (92%); TURKEY (91%); VIETNAM (73%)
LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Local entrepreneurs in Kumasi, Ghana, will receive training from I.B.M. employees in its Corporate Service Corps program. I.B.M. said it would have 600 participants over the next three years. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CITIZENS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

939 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 26, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths SCHOTT, MICHAEL B.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Classified; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 597 words
SCHOTT--Michael B., Beverage Industry Exec, dies at 59. Michael Bennett Schott, age 59, died on March 24, 2008 after a valiant battle with brain cancer. Born in Cincinnati, OH, in 1948, to the late Cincinnati Police Chief Jacob Schott and his wife Dollie, Michael leaves behind his wife Evonne Stevenson Schott; his children, Kyle Louise, Chicago, John Chapin, Boston, Margaret Condon, San Francisco, Leslie Kathleen, Los Angeles, and Mark Edmund, Santa Cruz, CA; siblings Barbara Boyd (Jack Boyd, late), Jacksonville, FL, Jacob Schott (Donna), Cleveland, OH, and; step-children Samuel Joseph Stevenson and Thomas Scott Stevenson, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI. Mike graduated from Western Hills High School and was named All-American for his football prowess.

Mike attended Ohio University on a full football scholarship and excelled not only on the field but in the classroom as well. After leading his team to an undefeated season and the 1968 Tangerine Bowl, he was inducted into the Ohio University Hall of Fame. Dr. Vernon Alden, then president of Ohio University and former Associate Dean of Harvard Business School, became Mike's mentor, guiding his decision to pursue a Masters in Business Administration at Harvard Business School rather than a professional football career. After graduation from Harvard in 1972, Mike began his career and eventual rise as the industry king in the beverage world. He returned to Cincinnati, with NuMaid Margerine where he met and married Roberta Louise Condon. As newlyweds they moved to the New York metro area and Mike began working for Pepsi Bottling Co. He eventually became president of Poland Spring Water, holding the position until the company's purchase by Perrier. Upon the sale of Poland, Mike moved back to Cincinnati, to be a partner in the Hudepohl Schoenling Brewing Co. In Cincinnati, Mike's family grew to five beautiful children. Not long after the birth of their youngest child, the family moved to Detroit where Mike turned his efforts to Don Lee Distributor. Within a year, the talented entrepreneur was tapped to launch AriZona Iced Tea. At AriZona, Mike further demonstrated his ability to improve operations and manage rapid sales growth in the beverage industry. He was quickly promoted into senior management at Nantucket Nectars, Snapple, SoBe, Everfresh, and others, eventually becoming the lynchpin in building Monster Energy, the backbone of the unprecedented growth of Hansen Beverage Company. During Mike's five years with Hansen, the company was named by Forbes Magazine as the number one small company in the U.S. in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, Mike Schott married Evonne Stevenson. Too soon thereafter, in October 2006, Mike was diagnosed with a Stage Four GBM brain tumor. Mike's work ethic and determination to succeed now faced an even greater challenge. He used this tragic turn of events as an opportunity to move medical science forward. Mike was a man who put his time, effort, and financial resources into supporting projects he felt would benefit the greater good. While his battle with cancer was eventually lost, the medical progress he forged with Genentech Inc. will continue to fight for those suffering from similar ailments for years to come. Mike was known for his work ethic based on his favorite sayings including attitude is everything, persistence and determination alone are omnipotent and from those to whom much is given, much is expected. His legacy will continue to grow through the Michael B. Schott Fund at the Hermelin Brain Tumor Center at the Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (90%); FOOD & BEVERAGE (90%); BEVERAGE INDUSTRY (90%); EDUCATION (90%); CHILDREN (89%); NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS (89%); BEVERAGE MFG (89%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (88%); SOFT DRINKS (78%); CANCER (78%); MARRIAGE (77%); AMERICAN FOOTBALL (74%); SPORTS (74%); SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS (74%); SALES FIGURES (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); SOFT DRINK WHOLESALERS (69%); ETHICS (66%); BREWERIES (64%); POLICE FORCES (57%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (90%)
COMPANY: HANSEN BEVERAGE CO (62%); HUDEPOHL-SCHOENLING BREWING CO (65%); PEPSI BOTTLING GROUP INC (54%)
ORGANIZATION: OHIO UNIVERSITY (91%)
TICKER: PBG (NYSE) (54%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (54%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (54%)
PERSON: MICHAEL L BENNETT (91%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CINCINNATI, OH, USA (94%); BOSTON, MA, USA (92%); SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (92%); LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (92%); CLEVELAND, OH, USA (79%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%); JACKSONVILLE, FL, USA (79%); DETROIT, MI, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (90%) OHIO, USA (94%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (92%); CALIFORNIA, USA (92%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); FLORIDA, USA (79%); MICHIGAN, USA (79%); ARIZONA, USA (72%) UNITED STATES (94%); POLAND (90%)