Putting the plaintiff on trial

Image by vaXzine via Flickr

Attorney Samuel J. Samaro, the hired gun who opposed me at the Superior Court trial of my suit, taught me a thing or two. But nothing he said came in time to help me win my case. "I can't be bought, but I can be rented [for $300 to $400 an hour]," he said during a break on Thursday.


Samaro said that in the 20 or so years he has been practicing employment law, he has represented both sides -- employers and employees. If he believes in a worker's case, he will take it on a contingency basis (no hourly fee). The only way to win, he said, is to portray the employer as "evil." That's what he did to win a $1 million settlement for two professors.


He didn't have to say what he does when he defends an employer -- I watched him doing it to me. Samaro put me on trial and, with a favorable ruling from the judge, he was able to dredge up details of my performance reviews dating to 1985. I put my objections on the record, telling the judge anything beyond 2005 would be unduly prejudicial.

Samaro also won another motion -- to admit excerpts from my "Eye on The Record" blog that referred to all the white male columnists The Record was left with after getting rid of Hispanic, black and female columnists in their 50s. My comment that Mike Kelly and John Cichowski were "over the hill" also was used against me.


There was more. A letter I wrote to the EEOC in 2006 and my answers to questions during the discovery phase of the case also were quoted. As with the blog, these unfortunate comments about Bill Pitcher's weight had nothing to do with age discrimination and retaliation -- the two narrow issues the jury had to decide.

He used more words of mine against me, especially my preference for naturally grown or raised food as opposed to the obsession for desserts often found in the food pages of the newspaper. My e-mails to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, notably one sent April 4, 2008, about mistreatment of older workers, also were read to the jury.


I recall the day I testified and Samaro cross-examined me, using performance reviews written by Kathy Sullivan and Dan Shea, among other editors. On many occasions, I explained to the jury, I was fighting for the integrity of my lead paragraph with rewriters and others, but the jury only saw someone who was difficult to deal with.

I wasn't allowed to tell the jury anything about Sullivan or especially Shea, who was married when he had an affair with a reporter, Stephanie Stokes. When he first took over the Business News department, he told me to call a failing bank but not to say I was a reporter. Later, Shea was put in charge of buying a new typesetting system, and purchased one that made us miss deadline numerous times after he left for New Orleans.


When I moved to the copy desk to get "editing experience" at the age of 44, Shea sent me an Atex message: "Sigh, I can't make old jokes about you anymore."


The judge also granted another Samaro motion, preventing me from discussing what I saw as mistreatment of other older workers in the newsroom, including fellow members of the news copy desk. I doubted the jury understood how the desk had become a scrap heap for older workers and was considered the lowest of the low by assignment and the Franks.


I wanted to call Diane Tinsley, a graphic artist who left The Record, and have her testify about her age- and race-bias complaint to the state Division on Civil Rights in 2008, but was prevented from doing so by the judge, who granted Samaro's objection. 

Defendant Jennifer A. Borg, the chief legal officer of North Jersey Media Group, had been in contact with Tinsley's lawyer, but Borg also knew she had testified at one of her depositions that my bias complaint was the only one filed. Borg was in the courtroom from beginning to end, taking notes and advising Samaro.

In his closing argument, Samaro also tried to portray me as litigious and claimed I used my knowledge of age-discrimination law as a "shield" against discipline -- despite having told the jury in excruciating detail how I was disciplined numerous times, put on probation and cited for insubordination twice (in 1995) when I walked out of meetings to discuss my calling in sick on a Jewish holiday.


Jennifer Borg even testified that my supervisors feared me -- feared that I would name them in a lawsuit.