May 20, 1991

The Fox Broadcasting Company turned momentum into money last year. Now the young and restless network has lost ground in the ratings even as it expanded its program base. Advertising industry executives predict that Fox will take in less advertising money for its fall programs this year than it did last year.

The Empire State Building is for sale, and for a mere $45 million to $50 million -- a pittance for a prime property in midtown Manhattan. But there's a catch, and it's 85 years long.

They come from all walks of life: jail cells, the business world, the ranks of the retired. They write with manual typewriters or purple magic-markers, speak in sentences bursting with legalese or a home-cooked version of it. And they have one thing in mind: justice, may it please the court. In about 1,500 cases a year -- or one of every six civil lawsuits filed -- people decide to act as their own lawyers in the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, based in Manhattan. Every case is treated seriously, even the ones that are presented in documents decorated with Jolly Rogers.The plaintiff in one pending suit, charging "involuntary slavery" among other offenses, lists two pages' worth of defendants, including the New York City Police Department, a handful of Federal officials, and the grocery store down the street. Another case involves a man who says ghosts have been attacking him on Staten Island at the behest of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, John Gotti and a police officer he knows. "Some ghosts are good and some are bad," the plaintiff states. Sounding Like a Lawyer The litigants try, at great length, to speak the language of the law. "Your honor, now for the records am setting out the legal facts finding to the argumentative conceptive resumption contestation substance on the next stated paragraph the why every things due accordance with the U.S. Laws that they have committed to the above mentioned the either negligent or which I do believe to the most possibility it was a Premeditated Crime," wrote one man, representing himself in a suit against an airline that he claimed had seized his passport and forced him to return to his native Iran, where he had to live in a garage. Attached to the complaint were a series of exhibits, all color photographs of the garage.

Ethiopian guerrillas have overwhelmed army units in a number of strategic towns and are now threatening to seize control of all roads linking the capital with the last port the Government still controls, military officials said today. The weekend offensive put the Government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam in a deteriorating military situation as it prepares to meet next week with the three rebel groups in a peace conference sponsored by the United States in London.

The board of directors of the American Red Cross voted unanimously today for a sweeping reorganization of the way it collects and handles blood in a move intended to restore confidence in a system that has too often come close to shipping contaminated blood for transfusions. The plan, which is to be announced Monday morning by the new president of the Red Cross, Elizabeth Dole, will impose new national collection and handling procedures and require the retraining of all employees at the organization's 53 blood centers.