NATION IN BRIEF : ILLINOIS : Contract Case Won by Cheever Widow

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the widow of author John Cheever in her effort to control publication of a collection of his short stories. The ruling comes after a bitter three-year court battle. The state’s highest court ruled that a contract between Mary Cheever and a Chicago publishing house seeking to publish the stories was not valid because it did not say how many stories or pages would be in the collection. Mary Cheever had sought to invalidate the 1987 contract with Academy Chicago Publishers Corp. because, she said, the publishers had violated an understanding that she be allowed to choose the stories to be included in the collection. Cheever died in 1982 at the age of 70.