Radio Recap: Case Dismissed

Case Dismissed was a 13-episode program produced as an educational series on NBC from January 23 until April 17, 1954. The series was designed to educate listeners - including teenagers - about important matters of the law and especially to dispel many fictions that people spread about the law. The show was hosted by John C. Fitzgerald, the dean of Loyola University Law School.

All of this sounds it would make for dry, uninteresting radio (especially if you're familiar with my disdain for 1950s NBC dramatic programming) but Case Dismissed is surprisingly good at what it set out to achieve. It featured large casts of good radio actors and appropriate use of sound effects. You might even learn something important about the rule of law in the USA (if such a thing still exists).

The episodes create various dramatic scenarios where a protagonist makes an error (usually by thinking they don't need a lawyer to solve a problem) and lands themselves with major legal headaches. The formula is done differently depending on the particular problem, such as in "Legal Wills" in which a man dies early in the episode with no legal will for his wife; as a ghost, he observes the problems he's left for his wife.

You can hear the 12 surviving episodes in this Old Time Radio Researchers' YouTube playlist.