Former Publisher Sued for Defamation
Former newspaper publisher Robert E. Page was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of defaming the man who ousted him two weeks ago from the company that owns the Orange Coast Daily Pilot and the Glendale News-Press.
The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of New York investor Elliot Stein Jr., seeks $6 million in general damages and an unspecified amount in punitive damages.
Stein contends in the suit that Page and one of his lawyers, Franklin J. Lunding Jr. of Monterey, slandered him in a conversation with another investor in the company and libeled him in a letter delivered to directors and investors in Page Group Publishing Inc., the owner of the newspapers and other publications.
Page, former publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Boston Herald, declined to comment, saying he had been unaware of the suit.
Stein’s vehicle for owning a majority stake in Page Group is a limited partnership called Commonwealth Capital Partners Ltd., a New York firm with investors that include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Other Page Group investors are Hollywood producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters and Chicago industrialist Lester Crown.
On May 13, Stein, chairman of Page Group, ousted Page in a confrontation at corporate headquarters in the Daily Pilot building.
Page had earlier accused Stein of reacting to demands Page had been making for access to documents involved in Page Group’s acquisition of Tu Mundo , a Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles. Stein, Guber and Peters were part of a four-member partnership that had owned Tu Mundo and sold it to Page Group.
Page sent a letter to Stein on May 24 that accused Stein of not being honest with him about the Tu Mundo deal. Page has said publicly that he was told the newspaper was a break-even operation at worst.
Instead, according to Page’s letter, which was attached to Stein’s lawsuit, Page Group paid $1.7 million “for an insolvent business with annual gross revenues no greater than $850,000 . . . and with a loss of no less than $300,000 each year and with a negative net worth.”
Stein’s suit alleges that Page’s statements were untrue and that the letter was sent to investors to discredit Stein and undermine investors’ confidence in him.
