Court Rules, al Dente, for Italy

For many, it boils down to a matter of taste, but the debate was hot and saucy over whether the Italians or the Chinese invented pasta. The Court of Historical Review and Appeals in San Francisco, which has decided august issues such as where the martini was invented and what nationality invented the hot dog, ruled in favor of Italy in the pitched pasta battle. “He used his noodle,” victorious attorney Frank D. Winston said of the judge, George T. Choppelas. Expert witnesses appeared for both sides. They included Marco Polo, who testified that, contrary to popular thought, he did not bring back pasta from China to Italy. Bruce L. Smith, psychologist at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, put some starch into the argument for China by pointing out that pasta has been consumed there since the Chang dynasty (1700 BC). “Based on my own personal bias, however,” Smith said, “The noodle was in fact invented by ancient Hebrew tribes.”

--Roger Vadim kissed and told, and now he’ll have to pay, said a Paris court that ordered the director to give actresses Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve $10,000 each for revealing intimate details of their lives in his book, “Bardot, Fonda and Deneuve.” The book, about his relationships with the three screen beauties, portrayed them all as weak and troubled until he propelled them to stardom. The court pointed out that Bardot, who was married to Vadim, recently has gone to great lengths to avoid publicity, and that Deneuve, who had a son with Vadim but never married him, also guards her private life. Jane Fonda, also a former Mrs. Vadim, was not a party to the lawsuit.

--Neither does it pay to be clumsy, a Canadian court decided in ruling in favor of a son who sued his mother for negligence after she fell on him and broke his ankle. Charles Knapp, 29, was awarded the equivalent of $9,360 from the estate of his mother, Shirley Knapp, who died in April, 1986. According to evidence presented in the Brockville, Ontario, district court, Knapp was visiting his parents when his mother tripped while getting up to dance and fell on him. The judge said she should have looked first before getting up.

--He skipped a school lunch when his bodyguard whisked him away at noon, but otherwise, there was little to distinguish Britain’s 4-year-old future king from the other youngsters at Wetherby School in London. It was the first day at the new school for Prince William, who was accompanied by his mother, Princess Diana. Last month, William finished 15 months of nursery school at a private kindergarten, as the first member of the royal family to attend an outside preschool.