Jeremiah Stamler was born October 27, 1919, in Now York City, the only child of Russian emigrés. His mother was a school teacher and his father a dentist. He received an A.B. from Columbia University in 1940, and an M.D. degree from Long Island College of Medicine (New York State University Medical School at New York) in 1943. Stamler later served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps. He spent much of his career at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago (1948-1958), with the Chicago Board of Health, and as an associate professor at Northwestern University Medical School. In 1963, Dr. Stamler became director of the Heart Disease Control Program and the Chicago Health Research Foundation of the Division of Adult Health and Aging, Chicago Board of Health. Dr. Stamler was most involved with research into the causes and prevention of cardiovascular diseases, and was acknowledged as an international authority in the field. At the time of the lawsuit, Dr. Stamler was Western Hemisphere editor of the Journal of Atherosclerosis, and had written over 150 articles and several books on diseases of the heart and blood vessels. One of his books, Your Heart Has Nine Lives--Nine Steps to Heart Health (Prentice-Hall, 1963), received the prestigious Lasker Foundation Award in 1965. Dr. Stamler has won numerous other awards for his work.
In 1942 he married Rose Steinberg. Their son, Paul Jerry Stamler, was born in 1950.
In May 1965, the House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings in Chicago to investigate Communist party activity among Chicago steelworkers from the 1930s through the 1950s. A number of persons, including Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Yolanda Hall, a research nutritionist associated with him, were subpoenaed to testify before the Committee. Weeks before the May hearing date, their names were released to the Chicago press, a violation of HUAC's own rules. Nine of those subpoenaed refused to answer questions, while Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall read prepared loyalty statements before walking out of the hearing. Dr. Stamler was identified as a communist by committee counsel Alfred Nittle during the course of questioning another witness, but neither he nor Mrs. Hall were identified as communists through statements or direct testimony admissible in court. Throughout the subsequent proceedings, the Committee never revealed why Stamler and Hall had been called to testify, although their attorney contended that HUAC “was attempting to deter Mrs. Hall from any involvement in civil rights activities by harassing both her and Stamler” (Science, December 8, 1967). Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall were represented by Albert E. Jenner Jr. and Thomas P. Sullivan, of the law firm Jenner and Block, with the assistance of Chester T. Kamin and Nancy Stearns.
One day before the hearings opened, Stamler, Hall, and Milton M. Cohen, a Chicago social worker also subpoenaed by HUAC, filed suit against HUAC and members of the Committee in District Court (Jeremiah Stamler, M.D. and Yolanda F. Hall and Milton M. Cohen vs. Hon. Edwin E. Willis), to challenge the constitutionality of the Committee, claiming that the “act of Congress and committee rule outlining the committee's authority is so vague and broad that it violates freedom of speech and other rights guaranteed under the First, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth amendments.” The suit relied on the Due Process clause, rather than the self-incrimination provision of the Fifth Amendment (Chicago Daily News, May 29, 1965). Other charges accused the Committee and its members of publicity seeking, restricting the right to cross-examine informers, and leaking the names of subpoenaed witnesses to the Chicago press in advance of the hearing. Albert E. Jenner Jr., attorney for Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall, summed up their legal position by stating that “the evidence against his clients consisted of the 'unverified assertions' of Nittle and the 'coached and uncorroborated' testimony of [Lucius] Armstrong, a paid informer who admitted he did not know Stamler” (Chicago Daily News, May 29, 1965). In their brief, Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall claimed that:
“Two of the witnesses who testified before the Subcommittee were paid government informers viz., Miss Lola Belle Holmes and Mr. Lucius Armstrong… Neither of these witnesses mentioned plaintiffs Stamler or Hall in their extensive initial testimony. However, just before Dr. Stamler was called as the last witness on May 27, 1965, the third day of the hearings, Mr. Armstrong was recalled, and he then testified to a single hearsay statement he allegedly heard about Dr. Stamler in an alleged meeting which took place in 1959. Mr. Armstrong admitted he had never met, seen or talked to Dr. Stamler.” (From Plaintiffs' Brief in Opposition to Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, August 31, 1967, pages 13-14.)
Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall refused to testify before the Committee so as not to render their lawsuit moot. Judge Julius J. Hoffman (of later Chicago Seven notoriety) dismissed as premature the first complaint (case No. 65 C 800) and later dismissed a second, updated complaint (No. 65 C 2050).
In October 1966, HUAC cited Stamler, Hall, and Cohen for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify, and on July 7, 1967, announced its intention to seek criminal indictments. In the meantime, the three sought an injunction to stop HUAC's actions (Stamler vs. Mitchell), citing three employees of the Committee, the U.S. Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. This request was denied. The criminal indictments were then obtained and slated for trial as U.S. vs. Stamler. As a result of the indictments, the Chicago Board of Health placed Dr. Stamler on inactive status, pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings. He was later reinstated.
On appeal the petitioners (Stamler, Hall, and Cohen) again sought a declaration that the Committee was unconstitutional and an injunction against prosecution of the criminal indictments. In November 1966, the Appeals Court reversed the dismissals of the earlier complaints and remanded the case with orders to Judge Hoffman to convene a three-judge court to try the case. One year later, on November 9, 1967, the three-judge District Court, comprised of Judge Hoffman, Circuit Judge Walter J. Cummings, and District Judge Alexander J. Napoli, denied the defendants' motion to dismiss the now-consolidated complaints, and in effect, ordered a trial of the validity of HUAC's enabling act, and thus, HUAC's constitutionality.
On March 1, 1968, the three-judge court granted the plaintiffs' requests for interrogatories and discovery motions. The plaintiffs served notices to take the depositions of Francis J. McNamara, Donald I. Sweany, and Neil E. Wetterman, prosecutors for HUAC. The defendants renewed their motion to dismiss the complaints, which the three-judge court granted in June, holding that the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution protected the Congressional defendants and their staff from civil and criminal suits. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal of this decision, and the case was remanded with orders for the three-judge court to dissolve itself and for Judge Hoffman to enter a fresh decree. The appeal from the fresh decree (also dismissing the claim) was again reversed by the Appeals Court in August 1969, which returned the case to the District Court for trial. The Appeals Court stayed prosecution of the criminal indictments pending trial and final disposition of the civil case. Thus, the Appeals Court held that the Speech or Debate Clause did not protect defendants who were not members of Congress, in this case, the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S. attorney, and employees of the Committee. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the defendants' petition for certiorari in the case Ichord vs. Stamler(1970).
Following the second denial of certiorari, the cause of action came up once more in the District Court, with Judge Hoffman required by the Appeals Court to try the claim testing the constitutionality of HUAC. The plaintiffs moved to take depositions of HUAC employees Donald C. Sanders, committee counsel Alfred M. Nittle, and Anniel Cunningham, to enforce the previous discovery order, and to file a third supplement to complaints, all in December 1970. The Committee and its staff members resisted production of the documents, among them the voluminous file of newsclippings compiled by HUAC, and its unedited hearing transcripts (which the plaintiffs claimed showed deviations from proper procedure later excised in printed transcripts). In July 1971 Judge Hoffman granted the defendants' motion for a protective order. The plaintiffs then petitioned for a writ of mandamus directing Judge Hoffman to grant their motion for discovery sanctions (Stamler vs. Hoffman and Mitchell).
In 1973, after the House Committee on Committees unanimously recommended that the government's lawsuit be dropped and the Committee be dissolved, the suit was dismissed at the government's request. Subsequently, Stamler and Hall withdrew their civil suits.
