A Simple Contract Issue or a Moral Issue? Ask a 5th grader.
Kathy Cox, the superintendent of Georgia’s schools, won $1million on the Fox TV game show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? Onthe show, Cox pledged to give the winnings to three public schools for the deafand blind. However, after Cox won, her husband filed for bankruptcy. Now the creditors say that the game show earnings belong to them, not theGeorgia schools. The creditors point to Cox’s contract with Fox; theGeorgia schools present a powerful moral appeal. Here’sthe story from yesterday’s NPR Morning Edition (you can listen if you follow thelink):
The Atlanta Area School for theDeaf is one of the schools to which Cox promised the money. The school hadplanned to use part of its share of the money to buy uniforms for itsbasketball team. The school’s athletic director, Reginald Bess, says the team’suniforms are secondhand.
“Most of the uniforms that wehave — sort of hand-me-downs — don’t fit the kids. They’re kind of squeezedinto some of the uniforms, and it’s a little bit embarrassing for them if theygo play other teams,” Bess says.
However, the school is nowcompeting for the money with dozens of creditors of Cox’s husband, John.
A homebuilder, John Cox filed forbankruptcy after his wife’s TV appearance. Atlanta’s slow housing market lefthim and his wife $3.5 million in debt — she had co-signed many of his loans.
Alex Teel, a lawyer for the bankruptcytrustee, says regardless of what Kathy Cox said on the show, the contract shesigned with Fox TV says the money is hers.
“The terms of the agreementsare that prize money won is income to the recipient subject to taxation,”Teel says.
A Legal — And Moral — Issue
Teel says the question of who getsthe money is a simple issue of contract law, and that the $1 million would bethe Coxes’ only asset. But for some in the deaf community, it’s a moral issue.
About two-dozen hearing-impairedpeople marched recently in a quiet circle outside the bankruptcy trustee’soffice. They hoisted signs reading, “One Million Belongs To The DeafChildren” and “Robbing From The Blind, Shame On You.”
Georgia state officials have vowedto fight for the $1 million.
“The state of Georgia’sposition is that Superintendent Cox was invited to appear on this game showsolely in her official capacity as school superindendent, and accordingly, thewinnings belong to the Department of Education for the benefit for those threeschools,” says Russ Willard of the state attorney general’s office.
For her part, Cox says she neverconsidered the winnings to be her money. But she does remember signingdocuments before the show.
“I’m not an attorney,”she says. “And so I basically was just cooperating and thinking I wassigning, you know, what everybody signs.”
Fox TV plans to pay the $1 millionwinnings to the bankruptcy court, where a judge will decide whether Georgia orcreditors will get the money.
[Meredith R. Miller]