McCartheys Preparing Appeal in 'Salt Lake Trib' Case

By: Christopher Clark, Associated Press Writer (AP) Former owners of The Salt Lake Tribune don't plan to contest a judge's order that gave them this choice: Raise $355.5 million and buy back the newspaper this Friday, or lose your rights to regain Utah's largest daily.

But a fresh round of legal maneuvers in the three-year dispute means that ownership of the newspaper may not yet change hands.

Attorneys for Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co. -- the ousted management group led by the McCarthey family -- told the Tribune's current owner, MediaNews Group Inc., that they have no plans to further appeal the order last week that gave the family until Friday to raise the money and close on the newspaper's assets.

Instead the McCartheys are moving ahead on another appeal that attempts to throw out the Tribune's appraised value of $355.5 million. That figure is $100 million or more too high, the McCartheys say, and their lawyers are preparing an appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Tribune Publishing has until early November to appeal. If it somehow manages to have the appraisal overturned -- a long shot, legal experts say, given that the latest appraisal was performed on terms agreed to by the family -- U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart's mandated closing date of Oct. 10 becomes moot and a new date would be set, attorneys for both sides said Wednesday.

An appeal on the appraisal means Friday "will come and go" without much movement toward a resolution, MediaNews attorney James Jardine said.

Steve Marsden, an attorney for Tribune Publishing, insisted the McCartheys are holding to their objections to the appraisal and agreed that Friday probably won't find the two sides reaching a deal.

Outside of Seattle's bitter battle over the joint operating agreement between that city's two major newspapers, the Salt Lake City newspaper war is perhaps the nation's most closely watched newspaper ownership dispute.

MediaNews is led by Dean Singleton and operates 47 daily newspapers in the United States. The Tribune's joint operating agreement partner and rival daily, the Deseret Morning News, is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The McCarthey family contends it has a contractual option to buy back the paper five years after selling it in 1997 to John Malone's cable-television giant, Telecommunications Inc.

Family members say that when AT&T acquired TCI in 1999, it promised to honor the option, but AT&T instead sold it to MediaNews for $200 million in January 2001.

MediaNews and AT&T said the Deseret News Publishing Co. vetoed the family's purchase under its rights as a partner in the joint operating agreement.

Under that agreement, the Morning News and Tribune are partners in the Newspaper Agency Corp., which prints, distributes, and sells advertising for both papers. The Tribune's circulation is nearly twice that of the Morning News, and the Tribune generates nearly 70% of profits that are shared by the two papers.