Talk:United States v. Reynolds

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United States v. Reynolds[edit]

345 U.S. 1 (1953) Docket Number: 21

I. Facts: An airplane carrying several military personnel and several civilians crashed while conducting tests of "secret electronic equipment." The widows of the three civilians killed sued and asked for full disclosure of the Air Force?s accident investigation report. The report included information pertaining to the secret electronic equipment. The Air Force refused to provide the information, saying that to do so would threaten national security. Absent the report, the District Court and Court of Appeals viewed the question of negligence in the widow's favor and ruled for the plaintiffs.

II. Question Presented: If the government invokes privilege to withhold information in civil proceedings, must the trial court view the point on which evidence is withheld in the plaintiff's favor?

III. Final Decission:No. In a 6-3 opinion by Chief Justice Fred Vinson, the court held that cause for privilege must be reasonably demonstrated. As a result, the government may withhold information for reasons of national security even when that information is vital to the plaintiff's case. On remand, the plaintiffs lost.

IV. The Vote: 6-3

Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson -wrote opinion Hugo L. Black - dessent Stanley Reed Felix Frankfurter -dessent William O. Douglas Harold Burton Tom C. Clark Sherman Minton Robert H. Jackson- Dessenting

When referring to a sitting Justice of the High Court[edit]

Justices on the US Supreme Court are not addressed as "Mr. Justice Doe" but simply as "Justice Doe". See Supreme Court of the United States. --Triptenator (talk) 00:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Large quotation not marked as such[edit]

There is a large, sometimes paraphrased quotation (Starting with "We have had broad propositions pressed upon us for decision") from the majority opinion that is not clearly marked as a quote. Also, the court's references to other cases within the quotation are cited as though they were sources for the quotation itself. Ejegg (talk) 12:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC)ejegg[reply]

I reduced the large, sometimes paraphrased quotation down to 2 paragraphs and added quote marks. Wikipedia articles about U.S. Supreme Court decisions usually do not have multiple paragraphs verbatim from the decision. Kaltenmeyer (talk) 20:01, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Prosser & Keaton is irrelevant and confusing[edit]

The section headed Prosser & Keaton is irrelevant to the subject of this article and can only confuse the reader. That section mistakes "privilege" as being an Affirmative_defense. But that is not what was involved in the Renolds case, which dealt with an evidentiary privilege and its corresponding privilege from discovery. The fact that it was an evidentiary privilege involved rather than an affirmative defense is clear in other parts of the article and in the case opinion the article discusses. The Prosser & Keaton section should be removed entirely and replaced at an appropriate location with a reference to Privilege_(evidence). Marbux (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]