Pioneer Press wins 1st round in suit against Star Tribune

A Ramsey County district judge Friday granted a request from the St. Paul Pioneer Press allowing the newspaper to search at least a dozen computers owned or used by Star Tribune employees amid concerns that the Minneapolis paper obtained its main competitor's confidential advertising information.

Judge David Higgs also granted a Pioneer Press request that the Star Tribune's director of niche publications, Jennifer Parratt, be temporarily suspended from her job. Parratt, who was hired away from the Pioneer Press, started with the Star Tribune on Tuesday.

The St. Paul paper has alleged that Parratt broke a noncompete agreement when she took the new post at the Star Tribune and now poses an unfair threat to the Pioneer Press' advertising business.

Parratt was hired by Par Ridder, publisher of the Star Tribune since March 5 and former publisher at the Pioneer Press.

The Star Tribune has maintained that it has taken steps to identify and sequester or remove Pioneer Press information from the Star Tribune since March 29, the day that Ridder received a letter from Pioneer Press attorney Dominic Cecere accusing him of carrying St. Paul's confidential information to Minneapolis on his Pioneer Press laptop computer.

"We understand the judge's decision to preserve the status quo until all the evidence can be gathered and heard, and we will fully comply with the order," Star Tribune spokesman Ben Taylor said in a prepared statement. "We're anxious to get a full hearing on the merits and look forward to presenting our case as soon as possible."

The Star Tribune has 48 hours to turn over the computers, which will be searched for any Pioneer Press information. Parratt, who was at work Friday morning, left the building when the order was issued. She had no comment when reached at home Friday afternoon.

"It's not unusual for her to be put on the bench for a period of time while they're sorting things out," said Stacey DeKalb, a partner at Lommen Abdo in Minneapolis who has handled similar cases but is not involved in this one.

The order also asks the Star Tribune to turn over all Pioneer Press paper files, including the noncompete agreements for Ridder and Parratt. The lawsuit accuses Ridder of taking the agreements with him when he left St. Paul.

The ruling allows the Pioneer Press' computer expert, Mark Lanterman of Computer Forensic Services of Minnetonka, to begin searching the computers for Pioneer Press data. The items to be searched include an external hard drive Ridder used at the Pioneer Press, Ridder's three Star Tribune laptop computers and his home computer; the work computers of Michael Riggs, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Michael LaBonia, senior vice president of sales and strategic development, and Jon Ochetti, planning and analyst director.

Parratt's home computer and the home computer of Kevin Desmond, now Star Tribune senior vice president of operations who was hired away from a similar position at the Pioneer Press, also will be searched.

Also to be searched are a Star Tribune USB drive; a home computer of unknown ownership to which two e-mails were sent from the Star Tribune, and the Star Tribune servers where the data resides, according to the judge's ruling. The computers will be returned after their hard drives are copied.

Friday's ruling was the judge's answer to a request from the St. Paul paper for a temporary restraining order, which is meant to stop the things that the Pioneer Press considers the most harmful.

Lawyers for both sides will now begin interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence for a temporary injunction hearing that the judge scheduled for June 18. Both sides have agreed to expedited discovery, meaning that they will have to accomplish in a few weeks what might normally take six to eight months, said Christopher Harristhal, a partner at the Larkin Hoffman law firm in Bloomington who is not involved in the case.

Harristhal said the judge will also expect more from the Pioneer Press in the temporary injunction hearing because there will have been time to gather evidence and take depositions of the people involved. The injunction hearing may include oral testimony from people named in the lawsuit, if the case goes that far.

The stakes are high, Harristhal said.

"My prediction is that this case will settle before that hearing," he said.

Matt McKinney • 612-673-7329 • mckinney@startribune.com