Fired KDOC Worker Asks $1.2 Million From Station

An account executive fired from television station KDOC in 1984 would still have his job had he winked at orders to use fake viewer ratings and had not protested favoritism, his attorney told a jury Friday.

Eileen C. Moore, the lawyer for Steve Conobre, said in closing arguments that her client should be awarded $248,000 for wages lost when he was fired on March 8, 1984. She said that is the amount he would have earned from then until age 70 when he planned to retire.

Moore also asked for another $1 million in punitive damages against the station.

“If he had supported the favoritism and gone along with what he was instructed to tell clients, he would still be working there today,” Moore told the jury. “The reason for his firing had nothing to do with his performance as an account executive.”

However, Thomas Sheridan, the station’s lawyer, told the jury that Conobre, now 66, was terminated because of poor performance.

Sheridan said that when KDOC, Orange County’s only commercial television station, hired Conobre he was a 62-year-old man who had “relatively insignificant jobs most of his life” but the station still “took a chance” on him.

“He couldn’t cut the mustard. He could not succeed as a salesman of television time, and he was fired,” Sheridan said.

The jury began deliberations late Friday and will continue on Monday in the 2-week-old trial.

Conobre has alleged that he was fired only after he publicly refused to use fake ratings to enhance sales and after he protested favoritism that he says was shown by station general manager Michael Volpe to an ad saleswoman with whom Volpe was romantically involved. Both have denied the allegations.

In her argument to the jury, Moore said the $1 million in punitive damages asked by Conobre was fair because KDOC officials had displayed “deceitfulness” and “a lack of remorse” in their treatment of Conobre.

“I think that’s the kind of money it would take to deter this kind of behavior and send a message to the community,” Moore said.