$100 Settles Unusual TMC Distribution Case

By: Mark Fitzgerald A Wilkes-Barre, Pa., woman settled her legal case with the Times Leader Wednesday, three months after successfully bringing a novel criminal complaint of "harassment" because the daily continued to deliver its total market coverage (TMC) paper after she asked it to stop.

The Times Leader reported the newspaper settled the complaint with disgruntled resident Tina McCarthy by agreeing to pay her $100 in restitution for expenses pursuing her court case.

McCarthy's case attracted industry attention not because her complaint was unique -- nearly every paper with a TMC has heard from homeowners who don't want it dumped on their lawn or doorstep, free or not -- but the tactics she used to stop delivery of the weekly Expressline. She has said she repeatedly complained to newspaper officials, going up the hierarchy to the point she tried to call Knight Ridder Chairman and CEO P. Anthony Ridder in San Jose, Calif. She filed a police complaint to no effect.

Then McCarthy employed a quirk in Pennsylvania law that allows citizens to make a "private criminal complaint." In a filing in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, she accused Times Leader Vice President of Circulation Susan Kahlau of "defiant trespass" and lodged a complaint of "harassment" against the newspaper.

At a March 6 hearing, Kahlau testified she talked on the phone three times with McCarthy and even went out to her house personally to take the Expressline copy away, but she was unable to get the carrier, an independent contractor, to consistently stop delivering the TMC.

District Justice William Amesbury dismissed the trespass charge against Kahlau but found the paper guilty of harassment and fined it $150 plus court costs. The paper said at the time that it would appeal.

Times Leader President and Publisher Patrick McHugh told his paper he was satisfied with the settlement terms: "The fact the judge dismissed the charge indicates we did not violate the law."