Advisory on comments

Image by Ari Hahn via Flickr

I welcome your comments, as I have said before, but I will no longer publish any personal attacks or other mean-spirited sniping. If you want to bury yourself with your own words, you are welcome to do so. Just leave me out of it.

I have deleted or edited some of the comments published previously, and I'll feel free to reject any comment in the future -- especially the schoolmarmish ones that scold me for my manners and so forth.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything anyone says in a comment.

Also, I am not interested in your interpretation of the Superior Court jury's verdict in the trial of my age-discrimination suit, the evidence or anything else. There is a strong New Jersey law against age discrimination, and I had a right to file suit and try the case to the best of my ability. 

I don't regret anything I did, and I am weighing an appeal of some of the judge's rulings that I objected to -- with the goal of winning a new trial.

Jury: No cause for action in age-bias case

Image via Wikipedia

A Superior Court jury said this afternoon there was no age discrimination in the selection of The Record's food editor in 2006 or retaliation in the firing of Victor E. Sasson for filing a lawsuit against executives and managers.

Sasson, author of "Eye on The Record," represented himself at the trial, in consultation with Joshua L. Weiner, the plaintiff's Morristown attorney since last summer. (Photo: Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.)

Jennifer A. Borg, a defendant, and Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg were in court to hear the 8-0 verdict shortly after 5 p.m. The jury of four women and four men, all of whom were allowed to deliberate, returned their decision after only an hour of discussion.

The elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, is over 70. During breaks, he was asked about his childhood in Hackensack, where he lived in a home at Summit and Fairmount avenues. He said his father bought the house and many  acres of land behind it during the Depression. He was born in 1938.

Jennifer Borg, who attended the trial every day and testified, would not allow Mac to comment on the color photo that ran in the Woodland Park paper yesterday showing a woman making an obscene gesture at the photographer.

At trial, NJMG was represented by Samuel J. Samaro, a veteran litigator who heads the employment practice of Pashman Stein in Hackensack. He said he billed "in the vicinity" of $300 to $400 an hour, and boasted of a $1 million settlement he won in a sex-bias case filed by two women who were William Paterson University professors. His said his fee exceeded the money paid to the plaintiffs.

"You're in my house now," he said during a break in the proceedings this week, referring to the courtroom.

Judge Joseph S. Conte in Hackensack said the plaintiff did a "fine job" for a pro se, but noted it was a "tough case." The eight-day trial began March 29.

The judge preserved NJMG's right to file suit against "Eye on The Record," about the fourth or fifth time such an action has been threatened. Samaro alleged recent comments in the blog about the elder Borg constituted "a threat."

Weiner said he looked forward to defending Sasson, a former news copy editor and freelance food writer for The Record, and the blog. Sasson's lawsuit was served on the defendants in January 2008.