Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be for government tax claim; for person claiming patent or copyright infringement; for the plaintiff alleging the injury; for economic underdog if one party is clearly an underdog in comparison to the other, neither party is clearly an economic underdog; in cases pitting an individual against a business, the individual is presumed to be the economic underdog unless there is a clear indication in the opinion to the contrary; for debtor or bankrupt; for government or private party raising claim of violation of antitrust laws, or party opposing merger; for the economic underdog in private conflict over securities; for individual claiming a benefit from government; for government in disputes over government contracts and government seizure of property; for government regulation in government regulation of business; for greater protection of the environment or greater consumer protection (even if anti-government); for the injured party in admiralty - personal injury; for economic underdog in admiralty and miscellaneous economic cases. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

PER CURIAM.
A statement of the outlines of this cause appears in the opinion of Judge Conger in Christie v. Harris, D.C., 47 F. Supp. 39. We need not repeat what he there has said. The appeal comes to us upon a finding that the defendants, Ferber and Kaufman — the authors of the offending play — had not had access to the plaintiff’s play, or knowledge of its existence, or of the plaintiff or her collaborator, or possession of a copy of the play, or acquaintance with any of its incidents or characters. Unless we say that that finding was “clearly erroneous,” the appeal is at an end. Judge Conger saw both the authors, and they were examined at length before him; their testimony left him no escape but to accept it as he did, or to conclude that both deliberately perjured themselves; no lapse of memory will explain what they said. In such a setting nothing should move us to hold that the finding was plainly wrong except a parallelism between the plays which admits of no innocent explanation. We have read them both, and do not find the slightest basis in them for disbelieving the authors’ disclaimers. Such similarities as exist: i.e., the general theme, the mise en scene, the suicide and the rest, are easily accounted for upon the assumption of independent composition. Indeed the only thing which even faintly demands an explanation, is that the lead in each play takes to the stage because of her mother’s defeated histrionic ambitions. That might serve as corroboration, if there were really any tentative inference to corroborate; but there is none. In order to suppose that these two highly experienced and successful authors should have found in the plaintiff’s play cues for the farfetched similarities which she discovers, one must be obsessed, as apparently unsuccessful playwrights are commonly obsessed, with the inalterable conviction that no situation, no character, no detail of construction in their own plays can find even a remote analogue except as the result of piracy. “Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proof of holy writ.”
The attorneys for each of the defendants will be awarded $400 as allowance upon this appeal, and the judgment will be affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: A