I've been keeping half an eye on the various scandals involving backdated options, but this one made me sit up and take notice. Apparently Cablevision awarded options to one executive after his death, but backdated them to a date when he was still alive.

As John Coffee, a professor of law at Columbia University, put it, "Trying to incentivize a corpse suggests they were not complying with the spirit of shareholder-approved stock-option plans."

(Wall Street Journal link, paid subscribers only.)