March 19, 1991

Supreme Court Will Rule On Prayer at Graduations In a new look at the constitutional boundary between church and state, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether graduation ceremonies at public schools can include prayers that mention God. Page A16.

In a city where political brand names are important identification, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut might be labeled Brand X. He votes Democratic, sounds Republican and puts a plague on both political houses.

Connecticut's highest court ruled today that the possessions of a homeless man living under a highway bridge are protected by the same constitutional rights to privacy as the belongings of any house or apartment dweller, even though the man's "home" was technically a public place anyone could enter. Legal experts, including law professors and advocates for the homeless, say the decision is the first in which a high state court has ventured directly into the tangled issue of how the Fourth Amendment provisions of the United States Constitution, intended to prevent the improper search and seizure of a home, should be interpreted in an era when increasing numbers of people are homeless. His 'Last Shred of Privacy' The State Supreme Court, in a sharply divided 4-to-3 ruling, said the police should have obtained a search warrant to open a duffel bag and a cardboard box belonging to the homeless man, David Mooney, who lived under an on-ramp to Interstate 91 in New Haven until August 1987, when he was arrested on a murder charge.

A Federal appeals court yesterday reversed the stock-manipulation convictions of the GAF Corporation and a senior executive. The case was part of the scandals that rocked Wall Street after the fall of Ivan F. Boesky, the former stock speculator. The court, in a 2-to-1 vote, ordered that the case be retried because of errors made by Federal District Judge Mary Johnson Lowe, who heard the case. If a retrial is held, it will be the fourth time the Government has attempted to prove its charges against GAF and James T. Sherwin, the company's vice chairman.

For the last three years, while New York City awarded contract after contract to the tiny Vanguard Meter Service company of Kentucky, complaints were being lodged inside and outside of city government about the company's performance on what now amounts to more than $50 million of water-meter installation work. The complaints involved allegations that meters were installed improperly, that homeowners lost workdays waiting for installers who never showed up, and that company workers were paid less than required by law. Financial Troubles At the same time, as city officials depicted the company as "the I.B.M. of the water-meter industry," persistent financial difficulties plagued Vanguard's work, caused at least in part by a long history of problems with creditors, of which the city seems to have been largely unaware.