Another Lawsuit Filed Among Owners in Philadelphia Inquirer Personnel Rift
By Steve Tawa
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The bickering co-owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are now suing each other.
When publisher Robert Hall fired Inquirer editor Bill Marimow last week (see related story), the feud become public.
The chairman of the parent company, Gerry Lenfest, and another shareholder, Lewis Katz, filed a lawsuit against the company itself and Hall.
They're asking a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge to reinstate Marimow, who won two Pulitzer Prizes as a reporter, and remove Hall.
Now, another co-owner, George Norcross, representing another faction with a 58-percent stake in the company, has filed a counter-lawsuit in Delaware, where the company is incorporated, against Katz.
A spokesman for Norcross, Dan Fee, says the suit contends that Hall, as publisher, had every right to let Marimow go.
"The majority owners believe that that is part of the journalistic and editorial operations of the paper, and they should have no role in it -- it is the role of the publisher," Fee said today.
A hearing on the first lawsuit filed is scheduled for next week.
