The report describes the bank's attitude as "contumacious" (stubbornly disobedient, says the dictionary) and "recalcitrant", full of "cant" and "stonewalling", while "making a fetish of client confidentiality" (which, as a Swiss bank, it might adopt as an advertising slogan).
In England, both houses of Parliament have asserted their power to punish contumacious acts.
In both criminal and civil contempt proceedings but more commonly in the former a distinction is drawn between contumacious acts that take place in the presence of the court and are labeled direct contempts and those that are committed outside the geographic boundaries of the court and are called indirect, or constructive, contempts.
Although there is no doubt that a congressional committee can compel the attendance of witnesses, a witness who has refused to testify or to answer a question cannot be held in contempt unless it has been made clear to him that his refusal will be treated as contumacious.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in his July 3 review of "A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War," by Amanda Foreman, asserts that "Americans are taught that the war was a noble conflict waged by Lincoln and the forces of light against misguided and contumacious Southerners".
During a recent parliamentary inquiry, Andrew Metcalfe, the Immigration and Citizenship Department secretary, accused Iranian detainees of "contumacious behavior, willful disobedience".
Now that Americans are taught that the war was a noble conflict waged by Lincoln and the forces of light against misguided and contumacious Southerners, it's especially valuable to be reminded that this was far from how all the English saw it at the time.
Venice was not enshrined in sun when the ferry docked, a disturbing insult to his aesthetics, and Aschenbach's mood was not improved when a contumacious, red-haired gondolier imposed his services on him.
Like the word contumacious!
In short, the English had landed in the sort of delicate, high-stakes, multicultural imbroglio that is best handled by an arrogant, contumacious, know-it-all bully.
Of the appellate court's decision, Mr. Welch said it speaks for itself "in that they define the action of the defendant as contumacious" and also sharply criticizes her going to federal court.
