Salt Lake City – The former owners of The Salt Lake Tribune have changed their minds about regaining the newspaper and instead want to sue for damages and acquire some part of The Tribune’s intellectual property, a lawyer for the current owner said Thursday.
“We were surprised that they have apparently now indicated that they are no longer interested in purchasing the paper, which for most of the history of this case is what we thought they wanted,” said James Jardine, a lawyer for ap, which bought The Tribune in 2001.
Denver-based ap is the nation’s fourth- largest newspaper publisher and owns The Denver Post.
Phil McCarthey, whose family-owned Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co., or SLTPC, has been waging a six-year battle to buy back Utah’s largest daily paper, would not confirm or deny that SLTPC has given up its fight for The Tribune. Instead, McCarthey and his lawyer said MediaNews has so “scrambled” the assets of The Tribune that it has breached the terms of the purchase option contract.
The uncertainty over SLTPC’s intentions erupted Wednesday at a hearing in Salt Lake City before U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell. Announcing SLTPC wants to amend an inactive lawsuit against AT&T Corp., MediaNews and other defendants, attorney Patrick Carome said, “Some things have become apparent” that make it impractical for SLTPC to exercise a purchase option it acquired when the McCarthey family sold the paper to cable provider TeleCommunications Inc. in 1997.
TCI later was acquired by AT&T, which sold The Tribune to MediaNews in 2001 for $200 million.
