Judge tells Par Ridder to leave Star-Trib

Click on the headline for a long treatise on the Mississippi Mess in Editor & Puiblisher.

By JOSHUA FREED (AP Business Writer)
From Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS - A judge on Tuesday ordered Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder to leave his job for a year, a sweeping victory for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, which had accused its former publisher of misusing proprietary information.

Ridder's actions when he joined the Star Tribune in March caused the Pioneer Press "irreparable harm," Judge David C. Higgs wrote.

He said an injunction was necessary to prevent further damage to the Pioneer Press "and to ensure that Ridder is not unjustly enriched by his past misconduct."

The judge also granted the Pioneer Press's request to block Jennifer Parratt, a former employee hired away by Ridder, from working at the Star Tribune before April 2008. Higgs denied the paper's motion to also block Kevin Desmond, who had been director of information technology for the Pioneer Press, from working at the Star Tribune.

Star Tribune chairman Chris Harte said the ruling was "clearly not what we expected" and the paper would consider its legal options. He said he would take over as publisher.

"We continue to believe that Pioneer Press information was not improperly used in order to cause competitive harm to Pioneer Press," Harte said. "And we continue to believe that Par Ridder and Jennifer Parratt were not unlawfully hired away from the Pioneer Press."

There was no immediate comment from Ridder. The newspaper said he left the building at about the time the ruling was issued, and his home number is unlisted.

Ridder had been accused of violating a noncompete agreement by joining the rival Star Tribune, and much of the testimony during a summer hearing in the case dealt with that. Higgs ultimately ruled that Ridder's noncompete agreement was invalid because he didn't receive any compensation for it. But he wrote that even without the noncompete agreement, Ridder violated the state's trade secrets act and his common law duty of loyalty to the Pioneer Press.

Ridder testified in June that he took information with him from the Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune, but he said he never used it for competitive advantage.

The judge found Ridder's explanations not credible.

"Given Ridder's past conduct and his cavalier attitude toward his use and disclosure of confidential Pioneer Press information, it seems to the Court that his past actual misappropriation is a good indicator" that he may do it again, Higgs wrote.

The Pioneer Press said Ridder copied more than a dozen computer documents, including budgets, monthly profits, employee wages, and how much advertisers were paying - key intelligence in a competitive newspaper market.

Ridder's hiring by the Star Tribune was a stunning move in Twin Cities media circles.

The Pioneer Press had been in Ridder's family since 1927, but Knight Ridder was sold to McClatchy last year. The Pioneer Press is now controlled by MediaNews Group Inc.

Ridder joined the Star Tribune in March, on the same day McClatchy sold that paper to Avista Capital Partners.

Associated Press Writer Doug Glass contributed to this report.