Committee loses another court round to Times, P-I

A judge on Friday turned back a committee's bid to obtain the massive record the owners of Seattle's two daily newspapers have compiled in the legal dispute that could determine whether the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shuts down.

The Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, which says it is working to keep both papers alive, had requested the 3.5 million pages of documents amassed for closed-door binding arbitration between The Seattle Times Co. and The Hearst Corp., the P-I's owner. It its January request, the committee said it needed the documents to pursue its own lawsuit against the two companies.

The companies asked King County Superior Court Judge Greg Canova to block that request. It was too broad, they said, and screening all the documents for confidential material would consume thousands of lawyer hours on the eve of their long-planned private arbitration hearing.

Hearst and The Times also asked Canova to postpone any similar committee "discovery" demands until after arbitrator Larry Jordan's ruling, expected by May 31.

Canova issued an order Friday granting the companies' two requests.

It was the committee's second setback in court this week. On Tuesday, Canova agreed to postpone a hearing on the group's chief claim against both companies until after Jordan rules.

Committee attorney Kathy George acknowledged there's probably little the group can do now until the arbitration proceedings conclude. "It's not what we had hoped for," she said. "It does seem that we're in the position of just waiting."

It's ironic, she said, that The Times has won national journalism awards for a series of stories that involved working to open improperly sealed court files.

"I think The Times should be ashamed of itself for not practicing what it preaches," said George, a former P-I reporter and editor.

Times Vice President Jill Mackie contended the issues are not comparable. "The two things are not even remotely related," she said. "Private arbitration to resolve disputes is a very common practice, one that's highly encouraged by the courts. The Times series, in contrast, aimed to open court records that were improperly and illegally sealed."

Mackie said the company's reaction to Canova's ruling was "great relief." Producing the documents now would have been difficult and costly, she said.

Hearst attorney Kelly Corr said his client also was pleased. "We need to focus all our energy on getting ready for [the arbitration hearing], not responding to discovery that could soon be moot," he said in an e-mail.

Hearst and The Times are fighting over the joint operating agreement (JOA) that has bound them for 24 years. While the newspapers maintain separate news operations, the larger Times markets, prints and distributes both.

It says the market can no longer support two daily papers and has moved to trigger an escape clause that could lead to closure of the P-I, termination of the JOA, or both. Hearst, which has said the P-I can't survive outside the JOA, is fighting that move.

Last March the companies agreed to submit the dispute to Jordan, and to not appeal his decision.

The Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, while not part of the arbitration, is an intervenor in an underlying lawsuit Hearst filed against The Times in 2003.

The agreement Hearst and The Times signed last spring said that, if The Times prevailed in arbitration, the P-I could close as soon as six months after Jordan's decision. Earlier this week the companies said that, if Canova ruled in their favor on both issues before him, they had agreed to push back the earliest possible shutdown date by another four months.

But Mackie said Friday that because Canova's order was silent on the four-month delay, "I'm not sure exactly where we are."

Corr said he, too, did not know the status of that agreement.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com