Par Ridder fights removal as Star Trib publisher

By Brian Bakst, Associated Press
About two months after being banished from the Star Tribune, former publisher Par Ridder is fighting the court order that bars him from working at the newspaper.

The Star Tribune and Ridder filed papers with the Minnesota Court of Appeals in recent days seeking to overturn a decision preventing him from leading the state’s largest newspaper until September 2008.

Ramsey County District Court Judge David Higgs ruled this September that Ridder caused “irreparable harm” when he defected from the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press. His old newspaper accused him of taking trade secrets with him.

Another executive who sought to follow Ridder to the Star Tribune, advertising manager Jennifer Parratt, also filed an appeal of Higg’s ruling barring her from joining the Minneapolis paper until a non-compete clause in her Pioneer Press contract expires.

Notice of the appeals were filed last Friday and this Monday. The appeals also challenge a ruling that the Star Tribune must pay the Pioneer Press’ attorney fees and expert costs in the case.

Ben Taylor, a spokesman for the Star Tribune declined to comment.

In its filing, the Star Tribune disputes that Ridder’s leap to the crosstown paper in March harmed his old employer.

The evidence showed that Mr. Ridder had never accessed any information that could be used to injure the Pioneer Press, and that all of the information Mr. Ridder had taken had since been quarantined and was no longer accessible to Mr. Ridder or to anyone at the Star Tribune,” Robert Weinstine, a lawyer for the Star Tribune’s parent company, wrote in court papers filed Monday.

Ridder’s own appeal, filed by attorney David Turner, argued that Ridder shouldn’t have been removed until after a full trial was held.
No date was set for an Appeals Court hearing.