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“Gilligan, my boy, these coconuts are mine.”
In 1995, H. Beatty Chadwick was sent to jail for being in contempt of court. Chadwick was involved in an apparently bitter divorce proceeding and had allegedly squirreled away $2.5 million in various overseas hidey-holes. He refused to tell the court where this money was, and although he claimed the money was lost in overseas investments, the court did not find this credible and threw him in the clink for contempt of court. Flash-forward to the present and Mr. Chadwick remains in jail, now believed to hold the record for prison time served for civil contempt of court. Recently, a three-judge panel ruled that Chadwick is still not cooperating with an ongoing financial probe, and should continue his prison vacation.
It seems to me that this hidden money isn’t doing Chadwick a lick of good while he’s sitting behind bars. So why not fess up and at least be outside? It’s sort of like Thurston Howell III refusing to give the Professor a coconut to make a radio to help get them home, rationalizing that the coconuts would be worth too much money on the mainland to be used as a radio.
