Judge to rule on bid to end suit against Van Lenten estate

The block of Euclid Avenue between Main Street and the tracks in Hackensack doesn't get much respect from the city's plows after a snowstorm, and in past years, it hasn't even been cleared. This is how the block looked on Tuesday afternoon, when blacktop was visible on most other streets.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Superior Court Judge Robert C. Wilson is expected to rule this week on a motion to dismiss the North Jersey Media Group suit against the estate of a former vice president.

The suit, filed in April 2013, is scheduled to go to trial in Hackensack on Monday.

The suit alleges Peter Van Lenten Jr., who was NJMG vice president of information technology until April 2009, helped others defraud the publisher of The Record.

The suit claims the company paid more than $2 million "on false/and or inflated invoices" from 2001 to 2009, and an additional $1 million for temporary workers hired at "greatly inflated charges."

Van Lenten died in April 2010, and the estate was named a defendant.

But Stephen R. Bosin, a River Edge attorney, describes the estate as an entity with no cash.

Bosin's motion to dismiss the suit cites "gross mismanagement" at NJMG.

In the suit, the company acknowledged the IT Department's "purchasing practices under Mr. Van Lenten's leadership" weren't reviewed until after his employment was terminated in April 2009.

For background on the case, click on the following links:

Suit filed against estate of NJMG vice president  

How NJMG lawsuit is enriching lawyers

Today's paper

Another court case, this one criminal, dominates the front page of The Record today, and it involves federal corruption charges against lawyer Joseph Ferriero, former head of the Democratic Party in Bergen County.

Good luck following the main story and sidebar on a case that was first tried in 2009, and has a lot of defense lawyers laughing all the way to the bank (A-1).

A bridge too far

Road Warrior John Cichowski is back with his first column since Jan. 25, when he wrongly claimed a photo supplied by Bob Leafe of Hackensack showed "a vertical gash that extends along one of the giant pillars" supporting the Route 4 bridge in Teaneck.

A photo that ran in the print edition and on North Jersey.com showed no such gash in the bridge support "near River Road."

Today's front-page Road Warrior column includes two photos of Route 4 bridges "over Palisade Avenue" and "over the Hackensack River," and inside, a graphic mentions Route 4 bridges in Hackensack and Teaneck (A-1 and A-4).

But it's unclear whether the photos and the graphic are referring to the same bridge Cichowski falsely claimed is unsafe on Jan. 25.   

Much of this can be attributed to continuing sloppy editing of Cichowski's column on the local assignment and copy desks, and the apparent total absence of fact-checking and proofing by minions who work under error-prone, six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton.

After embarrassing screw-ups like the Route 4 bridge fiasco, The Record's editors also are in the habit of trying to hoodwink readers by printing articles to correct unacknowledged errors, and today's Road Warrior column may be such an effort.

Two corrections of Local news stories appear on A-2 today.

Stiff upper lip

In London, Governor Christie is using the same "no comment" he has employed so effectively since 2010 to stop The Record and most of the other New Jersey media dead in their tracks (A-1).

This time, the GOP bully won't talk about how much a corporate group, Choose New Jersey, has paid for his trips, including a lavish jaunt to Jordan after "a trade mission" to Israel that was reported by The New York Times.

Add a stiff upper lip to Christie's double chin.

Two-thirds of registered New Jersey voters believe Christie is more concerned with his own political future than with governing the state, according to a new Monmouth University poll reported today by WBGO radio news.

Among Republicans, 54 percent believe Christie's White House ambitions are his paramount concern.

No. Your eyes aren't fooling you, the columnist is batty

Page 1 of The Record today reports on the jinxed history of the Edgewater parcel where luxury Avalon Bay apartment buildings burned down twice in less than 15 years, and on a former industrial landmark -- an enormous Aluminum Company of America plant and a centuries-old cemetery -- that occupied the site before that. Wednesday's inferno collapsed the 240-unit Russell building, above and below, but spared the 168-unit River Mews building.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Anyone who drives on Route 4 likely is doing a double-take at the photo in The Record today described as showing "a vertical gash that extends along one of the giant pillars holding up part of the span" (Local front).

But the photo shows no such gash in the pillar or column supporting the bridge, despite the best effort of Staff Writer John Cichowski to whip readers into hysteria over our failing infrastructure.

Cichowski's Road Warrior column is all over the place today:

It ranges from the bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund -- which pays for road and bridge repairs -- to efforts of state officials to find a stable funding source for it to almost anything else remotely related to Route 4 and other state highways, including potholes and traffic bottlenecks.

Attempt to deceive

But the reporter's second paragraph, when compared to the photo from Bob Leafe of Hackensack, appears intended to deceive readers:

They can clearly see a seam between two parts of the horizontal bridge, not "a vertical gash" in the support column, which appears intact. 

Cichowski also never tells readers whether they are looking at Route 4 east or west. Does the other side of the bridge show a similar seam?

GOP bully

If Cichowski's column isn't bad enough, Columnist Mike Kelly again wastes readers' time with a long-winded retrospective on the Route 3 bridge, where traffic was restricted this week to repair cracks in a steel beam (O-1).

Cichowski's and Kelly's columns dwell on cracks or other deterioration in road bridges, but The Record still refuses to blast Governor Christie for refusing year after year to raise the low gasoline tax to fund repairs. 

Edgewater fire

Today, coverage of the Avalon at Edgewater apartment inferno includes a fascinating glimpse at the unlucky history of the site in what was once a bustling industrial community (A-1).

Less interesting is the lead Page 1 story under the headline, "Displaced residents go home."

That story informs readers the smell of smoke still lingers in the air, but glosses over the cheap construction methods and lack of sprinklers in unoccupied spaces that allowed the flames to spread so quickly on Wednesday.

Tenants of the Avalon Bay building that was saved from the inferno now have a great view of the pile of charred rubble from the building that collapsed, and can contemplate a future that may be punctuated by yet another fire at the jinxed site. 

Christie scam

Also on Page 1 today is yet another boring Charles Stile column on Christie, a White House hopeful who is trying to pull on the nation the same "I'm-a-moderate" scam that he's perpetrated in New Jersey in the past five years.

Stile followed our feared and hated governor to Iowa and the so-called Freedom Summit "that drew nearly 1,000 Tea Party and conservative activists [read "racists"].

The columnist clearly adores Christie, and may be among the journalists hoping for a job in the GOP bully's administration, in the unlikely event Republicans pick him as their nominee in 2016, and he beats Hillary Clinton (A-1).

Ties that bind

Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn explores companies that are "selling their real estate to unlock the value that's tied up in the property and then leasing the buildings back" (B-1).

Lynn eventually gets to the sale of North Jersey Media Group's Rockaway Township printing plant to Hampshire Partners Fund III, which is sponsored by the Hampshire Cos. of Morristown (B-2).

NJMG President Stephen A. Borg is quoted as saying the publishing company will lease back the property for 20 years.

The Record, Herald News and other newspapers are printed there.

Silent on Hanson

No financial details are disclosed in the story nor does Lynn identify real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, a close friend of the Borg publishing family, as chairman and founder of the Hampshire Cos.

Hanson, 77, also was a major fund-raiser for Christie's two gubernatorial campaigns, and he and Christie both raised funds for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

The jet-setting Hanson also has received a great deal of favorable coverage in The Record as Christie's adviser on casino and sports development projects.