Hartford Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger ruled this week that my wrongful discharge against the Courant and its parent Tribune company can go forward.
In a major victory for me, Berger said that I have a legal right under Connecticut employment law to have a jury hear my case.
The Courant and Tribune claimed that as an at will employee I did not have a right to sue them for promises their executives may have made to me.
Hartford Attorney Victoria Woodin Chavey, the lawyer for The Courant and The Tribune Company, told Judge Berger in oral arguments that they cannot be held legally accountable to promises it made to me when I was given the job of investigative consumer columnist in 2006.
She argued that newspapers were protected by the First Amendment from being sued for its journalistic promises and even if all my claims were to be proven, I still did not have the right to sue.
My position was eliminated in August 2009 after I refused to be nice to major advertisers. I was offered a large settlement based on my 40 years at The Courant, which would have prevented a law suit and would have required me to sign a gag order.
Instead I sued, claiming that before accepting the consumer columnist job I had specifically requested assurances from the editor and publisher that I would be protected from advertisers whom I wrote about. I was given that assurance.
But Atty. Chavey said that even if that assurance was given, I could not rely on it because the First Amendment gives newspapers the right to decide what goes into a newspaper. In answering a question from the judge, she conceded that she could not cite a single court case that supported her position.
Besides, she argued, the promise I claim that was made was “vague.”
However, New Haven Attorney Joseph Garrison, my attorney, argued that requiring The Courant to keep its promise does not impinge on its editorial powers. We were not challenging The Courant’s right to decide whether to print what I wrote, only to keep its word that I would not be harmed because of advertiser backlash.
Judge Berger agreed with Garrison. His full ruling is printed below:
DOCKET NO. X07 CV 09 5033169S GEORGE GOMBOSSY
VS.
HARTFORD COURANT CO., ET AL.
SUPERIOR COM-1’J C
COMPLEX LITIGA ION’ DOCKET AT HARTFORD
NOVEMBER 26, 2010
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
This case returns to this court upon the July 29, 2010 motion for summary judgment of the defendants, The Hartford Courant.Company (Hartford Courant) and its parent company Tribune.Co.'(Tribune);. On June 29, 2010, this court granted the defendants’ motion to strike both counts of the amended two count complaint.’ Pursuant to Practice Book § 10-44, the plaintiff, George Gombossy, filed a substitute complaint on July 7, 2010 changing only the second count alleging promissory estoppel.’
As to this count, he now alleges the following facts. In September, 2006, Cliff Teutsch, executive editor of the Hartford Courant, fired the plaintiff as the business editor and reduced his
The first count alleged wrongful discharge in violation of General Statutes § 31-51 q and the second count alleged promissory estoppel based on the Hartford Courant’s mission statement.
2 On July 7, 2010, the plaintiff filed a notice of intent to appeal this court’s decision striking the first count of the complaint.
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pay. In response, the plaintiff told his editors that he retained counsel to pursue an age discrimination complaint. He was thereafter offered a position as an investigative consumer columnist, but he knew that pressure from advertisers could limit his role as such a columnist. The plaintiff sought and was given assurances by Teutsch that complaints or interference from advertisers “would not impact his job” and Teutsch confirmed that the publisher consented to this job condition. The plaintiff agreed to forgo his age discrimination claim for the new job.
The defendants now seek summary judgment on the promissory estoppel count. They argue that: (1) the statements allegedly made by the Hartford Courant’s managers do not constitute sufficient and definite promises; (2) the plaintiff’s at-will employment status defeats any promissory estoppel claim; and (3) the plaintiff could not have reasonably relied on any alleged promises by the Hartford Courant’s managers. The plaintiff filed a memorandum in opposition to the defendants’ motion on August 20, 2010 arguing that genuine issues of material fact preclude summary judgment. On September 7, 2010, the defendants filed a reply and the court heard oral argument on November 1, 2010.
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“Practice Book § 17-49 provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to
any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. . . . The party moving for summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue of material fact and that the party is, therefore, entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Plato Associates, LLC v. Environmental Compliance Services, Inc., 298 Conn. 852, 862, A.3d (2010).
“A material fact is a fact which will make a difference in the result of the case. . . [I]ssue-finding, rather than issue-determination, is the key to the procedure. . . . [T]he trial court does not sit as the trier of fact when ruling on a motion for summary judgment. . . [Its] function is not to decide issues of material fact, but rather to determine whether any such issues exist.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Vestuti v. Miller, 124 Conn. App. 138, 142, 3 A.3d 104 (2010).
HI
“Under the law of contract, a promise is generally not enforceable unless it is supported by consideration. . . This court has recognized, however, the development of liability in contract for action induced by reliance upon a promise, despite the absence of common-law consideration normally required to bind a promisor . . . . Section 90 of the Restatement [(Second)
of Contracts] states that under the doctrine of promissory estoppel [a] promise which the promisor should reasonably expect to induce action or forbearance on the part of the promisee or a third person and which does induce such action or forbearance is binding if injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise…. A fundamental element of promissory estoppel, therefore, is the existence of a clear and definite promise which a promisor could reasonably have expected to induce reliance. Thus, a promisor is not liable to a promisee who has relied on a promise if, judged by an objective standard, he had no reason to expect any reliance at all.” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Stewart v. Cendant Mobility Service Corp., 267 Conn. 96, 104-105, 837 A.2d 736 (2003).
In Stewart, our Supreme Court concluded that sufficient evidence supported a jury finding that a clear and definite promise had been made by an employer to an at-will employee. Id., 106. The plaintiff was concerned that her job with Cendant might be in jeopardy if her husband began working for one of Cendant’s competitors. Id., 103. She testified that her immediate supervisor told her that he had “absolutely no concerns about [her husband] entering the marketplace.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. Further, Cendant’s president and chief executive officer told the plaintiff’s immediate supervisor to “assure [the plaintiff] that she was very highly valued, that [she] was an integral part of the company, [that] he had tremendous
respect for [her] integrity and [that] there were no problems whatsoever with [the plaintiff] continuing the job in the event [that her husband] competed.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. The plaintiff further testified that she did not seek employment elsewhere as a result of those statements. Id., 111.
The Supreme Court held that the statements of the plaintiff’s immediate supervisor and Cendant’s president and chief executive officer were sufficiently clear and definite for the jury to find that they constituted a promise. Id., 106. The plaintiff’s immediate supervisor “promised the plaintiff only that her employment would not be affected adversely by her husband’s future employment with a competitor of Cendant. The plaintiff otherwise remained an at-will employee subject to termination at Cendant’s sole discretion.” Id., 109. Additionally, the court held that the plaintiff provided sufficient evidence for the jury to find that she reasonably relied on the promises. Id., 115.
In the present case, the plaintiff alleges that Teutsch assured him that complaints from advertisers would not impact his job and that Richard Graziano, the Hartford Courant’s publisher, agreed to this condition. At the plaintiff’s deposition on December 21, 2009,3 he
The defendants attached portions of the plaintiff’s deposition to their memorandum in support of their motion. Apparently, no one else, including Teutsch or Graziano, has been deposed yet.
testified that he told Teutsch that he would not take the consumer columnist job unless the publisher agreed that complaints from advertisers would not impact his job. (Transcript of the plaintiff’s deposition, December 21, 2009, p. 88.) He further attested that Tuestch assured him that “[t]he publisher agreed to that.” (Id.) Furthermore, the plaintiff testified that upon meeting Graziano, the plaintiff “said to [Graziano] . . . I wonder how much you’re going to like my work when I do a column on a major advertiser . .. and his response was ‘Don’t worry about that George.’ He said, ‘I’ve had cases where people threatened to pull a million and a quarter … and I stood up to them.'” (Id.)
The plaintiff argues that these comments are the functional equivalent of the statements at issue in Stewart. “[W]hether a representation rises to the level of a promise is generally a question of fact, to be determined in light of the circumstances under which the representation was made.” Stewart v. Cendant Mobility Service Corp., supra, 267 Conn. 106. Therefore, the fact finder must determine whether Teutsch’s and Graziano’s statements rise to the level of a clear and definite promise.
The plaintiff also alleges and argues that he agreed to waive his claim of age discrimination in accepting the offer to become the consumer columnist. Again, the fact finder must determine whether the plaintiff reasonably relied on the defendants’ alleged promises to his
detriment. See id., 104-105 (“a promisor is not liable to a promisee who has relied on a promise if, judged by an objective standard, he had no reason to expect any reliance at all” [internal quotation marks omitted]). In sum, this court finds that the plaintiff’s allegations, together with his affidavit and the portions of his deposition testimony, show that there are material issues of fact as to whether representatives of the defendants’ made clear and definite promises to him and whether he reasonably relied on them to his detriment.
As to the defendants’ argument that the plaintiff’s at-will status defeats a promissory estoppel claim, the Stewart court impliedly rejected this same argument. See id., 109. Accordingly, the defendants’ motion for summary judgment is denied.5
Berger, J. I
“The defendants argue that the plaintiff has not produced any proof that a representative from the Tribune made any promises to him and that summary judgment should be rendered for the Tribune. As no other depositions have been taken in this matter; see footnote 3; the court does not address this argument.
5 The court notes the defendants’ suggestion that the promissory estoppel claim is a reassertion of the wrongful termination claim that this court previously struck. Whether the defendants made a clear and definite promise to the plaintiff that advertisers’ complaints would not impact his job is certainly different from whether he had the right to publish in the Hartford Courant.
