The remarkable civil case that promises to break at last the chains that manacle the US Teamsters trade union to the Mafia and hand the running of the union over to a government-appointed adminstrator was heard by none other than Judge David Edelstein: remember Judge Edelstein? He was the doughty jurist who devoted nearly a decade of his life to hearing the Justice Department’s anti-trust action against IBM, and would certainly have broken the company up had the Reagan Administration not called the Justice hounds off in 1982 – and after having his ear bent by the impenetrable verbosity of that prolix posse of IBM lawyers, a simple case involving a few crooked trades unionists and the massed ranks of organised crime must have been child’s play by comparison.
