Sasson loses appeal in NJMG age-bias case

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The media ignored the trial, held in Superior Court, Hackensack.

The unfavorable jury verdict in Victor E. Sasson's age-bias lawsuit against North Jersey Media Group has been affirmed by the Appellate Division of state Superior Court.

In a 20-page decision released this morning, a three-judge panel agreed with the verdict -- that Sasson wasn't discriminated against because of his age in the 2006 selection of the food editor, and that his 2008 firing didn't constitute retaliation by Record managers and editors upset that he filed suit several months earlier.

The appeal court said Superior Court Judge Joseph L. Conte in Hackensack didn't commit reversible error. Sasson represented himself at the trial.

Joshua L. Weiner, the plaintiff's Morristown lawyer, argued during a March 16 hearing that Conte improperly permitted the use of posts from Eye on The Record during cross-examination to impeach the plaintiff's credibility.

He also said Conte should have barred defense use of performance reviews dating to 1985 that weren't relevant to events of 2006-08.

Weiner believes Conte should have instructed the jurors to use the blog entries only for the purpose of judging the plaintiff's credibility -- and to disregard Sasson's views the paper kept on older, white male columnists, while silencing older black, Hispanic and female columnists.

At the 5-day trial in April 2010, Sasson was barred from presenting evidence of age-bias against many other employees, including Patricia Mack, The Record's food editor, who was hounded into retirement by her editor, Barbara Jaeger.

See previous post on Thursday's paper

 

Appeal filed in Sasson v. NJMG lawsuit

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Victor E. Sasson, pro se plaintiff in an age-discrimination suit against North Jersey Media Group and author of Eye on The Record, is appealing the unfavorable verdict returned in April by a Superior Court jury in Hackensack.

The appeal is challenging two evidentiary rulings made by the trial judge, Joseph S. Conte.  

The first ruling allowed blog entries to be admitted to attack Sasson's credibility.  

The second allowed pre-2005 performance reviews to be placed into the record, even though they were not utilized by NJMG in refusing to promote him to food editor of The Record in 2006 and terminating him in 2008 -- several months after his lawsuit was served on the defendants, including Features Director Barbara Jaeger, Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes, and Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

The appeal was filed last week by Attorney Joshua L. Weiner of Weiner & Weiner in Morristown. He believes the blog entries and the pre-2005 evaluations were unduly prejudicial to the plaintiff's case, especially because the judge did not caution jurors to limit their consideration of that evidence.

NJMG originally assigned in-house Attorney Dina L. Sforza to Sasson's lawsuit, but replaced her in the months leading up to the trial with Samuel J. Samaro of Pashman Stein in Hackensack -- an attorney with a great deal of experience defending employers who commands an hourly rate of $300 to $400. Sasson represented himself during a five-day trial.

Sasson's attorney has asked for oral arguments before a panel of the Appellate Division of state Superior Court. If granted, they are not expected to take place until at least early next year.