The vote, conducted at an unusually contentious shareholders' meeting here, was a rare effort by investors to oust the management of a company and replace it with their own slate.

The setback for MCI illustrates the unusually contentious war the company has been waging with the Bell Atlantic Corporation.

If the trend continues, someday soon people may look at litigation as a last resort only for unusually contentious divorces (cases in which one partner is abusive or absent), rather than the norm.

Pollsters and political analysts, also stunned by the results, were beginning to link the numbers to recent events in the unusually contentious campaign.

One executive described the meeting as unusually contentious.

In an unusually contentious meeting between these teams, controversy was the order of the day.

In "Murder at the Vicarage," the feisty Miss Marple is the tenant of a house on the property adjoining the vicarage in an unusually contentious parish.

Moreover, even before the pictorials appeared they had already acquired enemies as a result of the previous year's unusually contentious competition for the contract to produce the 1869 U.S. stamps.

In the final days before Tuesday's primary, all three are spending at a furious pace, largely for television campaigns that are seen as an important factor in this unusually contentious race.

According to Moore, the production and post-production for "Valley of Darkness" was unusually contentious; it and "The Farm" were the most contentious episodes of the second season.