Jehle: a risk-taking attorney - Faustin Jehle

* Being a top counsel for a major publishing company means knowing the intricacies of copyright and contract law, author's rights and royalties. It also means working under the gun, scouring for possible libel and privacy infringements under the same relentless deadlines that rule writers and editors.

Attorney Faustin F. Jehle did it for 28 years at McGraw-Hill Inc. An inhouse counsel, he says, learns more publishing law in six months on the job than lawyers in general practice are likely to learn in a lifetime.

"You're bombarded by problems on a daily basis where you have to make deadline decisions on publishing," Jehle describes. "You have to review and check and research the law and make sure you can give advice quickly, because the editors on magazines and books aren't going to wait for you to learn the law. You have to give them an opinion right then and there."

Jehle retired as a vice president of McGraw-Hill in 1979. Now 70 years old, he maintains a private practice as a publishing lawyer and consultant. Among his clients are Penthouse, Management Technology, Penton/IPC, and numerous publishing executives who knew him at McGraw-Hill and who now seek his advice on publishing matters.

Jehle also has authored several monographs and articles on libel, privacy, and copyright law, and he lectures on the topics for the American Business Press and for publishing companies that hire him to give seminars to executives and editorial and advertising employees.

Not a hip-shooter

Although a publishing lawyer's role is often to err on the side of caution, associates who worked with Jehle at McGraw-Hill say he is a risk-taker, an editor's lawyer.

"Faustin doesn't just say, 'Hey, you can't do that.' Instead he says, 'This is how we can make it work.' That's why editors love him," one former McGraw-Hill executive says.

"He doesn't shoot from the hip, but there's no weaseling either," adds Daniel McMillan, now vice president of publishing, Lotus Development Corp., and former executive vice president, McGraw-Hill Publications Co.

During Jehle's tenure at McGraw-Hill, the company lost no major lawsuits involving libel, privacy or other infringement matters, the attorney notes. But there were times when it came down to some judicious haggling.

In one instance, Jehle's "preventive medicine" to keep a Business Week article on corporate espionage libel-free was inadvertently tripped up by an overly creative art department, he recounts.

The article had been thoroughly purged of hazardous statements. But into a chart showing the flow of information between certain corporations and individuals, the art department had placed figures that resembled "The Shadow," a sinister cartoon character. One of the named companies cried foul, saying the "surreptitious" figures in the flow chart suggested corporate espionage. The case was ultimately settled without major payments from McGraw-Hill.

But another publication that Jehle was in charge of screening hit the headlines before it hit the stands and dealt McGraw-Hill a painful public embarrassment. That was the notorious Howard Hughes autobiography supposedly ghostwritten by Clifford Irving, a writer who had published several books with McGraw-Hill prior to the Hughes episode.

Not until the book was in galleys, Time Inc. had signed for the serialization rights, and the publicity machine had begun to herald its debut did McGraw-Hill discover that checks for $750,000 in advance payments made out to Hughes had in truth been forged and deposited in a Swiss bank account by Edith Irving, Clifford's wife. Hughes was not collaborating--Irving had concocted the whole book and had duped McGraw-Hill for over a year.

To Jehle's credit, the episode might never have happened had McGraw-Hill executives taken his advice and demanded Howard Hughes' bank-documented signature on the initial contract. That would have meant that a third party had witnessed his existence. Instead, Jehle was overruled and that precaution was let slide--because Irving said that Hughes would not cooperate.

In his follow-up book about the hoax, What Really Happened, Irving credits Jehle with nearly ruining his scheme by being so "adamant and intelligent" in his demands. Of that ordeal, Jehle says that his recommendation to get a bank-documented signature was not suspicion on his part but merely "normal, precautionary legal measures." As a reminder, Jehle keeps a copy of What Really Happened in his desk drawer, with the passages concerning his own actions underlined neatly in red. And he manages to talk about the incident with wry humor.

Behind the scenes legal advice

As a lawyer and consultant in private practice in New York, Jehle now advises clients on the gamut of publishing law, from contract and copyright to acquisition and startup legalities. He was a legal consultant on the purchase of Financial World for Mark Meagher, a friend of 23 years and former McGraw-Hill associate. He advised Dan McMillan of Lotus on copyright issues in connection with a potential magazine startup there. And as consultant to Penthouse, he counseled Bob Guccione on the legal basis for re-issuing the magazine's Vanessa Williams pictures. Not a litigator, his expertise, Jehle says, is behind-the-scenes on the "practical" side of publishing--"what you can and cannot legally do."

Jehle sees important changes in the field of publishing law. The fast-growing area of data bank publishing--and the massive amount of information that is being stored and manipulated to feed those data banks--raises new legal questions for publishers, Jehle points out.

"Data bank, data retrieval and data transmission of information is becoming a more important and lucrative part of publishing," Jehle says. "The software, broadcasting and publishing companies are going to require lawyers that understand what the rights of individuals are and what can be extracted from existing information without infringing the original owner's copyright. And writers must know how to protect their valuable rights.

"You're going to see more lawsuits in the field of data banks by individuals who feel the data banks are lifting their material, massaging it and re-issuing it over transmission lines without paying the author his just due," Jehle asserts.

The growth of data bank publishing and of the legal challenges it spawns boosts the need for lawyers trained in the special problems of publishing, Jehle adds.

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