This was one of the few movies that received an "Approved" certificate despite two violations of the production code: the evildoers did not receive their just desserts by the end, and police officials were not portrayed as champions of good. Frank Shaw, a former mayor of Los Angeles, filed a $1-million lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming the corrupt mayor in the movie was modelled after him, and that it showed he was responsible for the bombing of a private investigator. Shaw had been voted out of office in 1938 in a campaign against political corruption led by a civic reform group (which had hired a private detective to investigate the mayor; it was that detective's house that had been bombed). Warner Bros. countered that the movie was a remake of a 1931 film, but nevertheless Warners' East Coast ad campaign for the film called it "The Ex-Mayor's Libel Suit Picture".