Jury Says VVM Owes Slightly Crazy Newspaper Editor A Heartfelt Apology. Also, $15.6 Million.

Whoa. Seems a jury has slapped Village Voice Media with $15.6 million in damages in the predatory pricing suit brought against them almost four years ago by the San Francisco Bay-Guardian. Seems the goodwill generated for VVM execs in the press last year when a nutty local sheriff arrested them on bogus charges didn’t extend to the California courts. SFBG publisher Bruce Brugmann is, well, an obsessive neurotic whose ego got the better of his sanity when he abandoned his responsibility to protect his paper and employees just to bear out a grudge. (I know! Instead of trying to keep our newspaper afloat by actually competing with the uh, competition or whatever, let’s just sue them for being bigger and meaner than us and bank on a big fat settlement at the end to meet payroll!) Which is a point made convincingly in the statement VVM released after today’s decision. Not that it’s all that easy to see through all its swagger and watch-us-be-clever-ness. “Like Ralph Nader, Bruce Brugmann is out of touch with reality,” it reads. Ho! Ho. Hum. “We have not sought to injure the Bay Guardian; we just don’t want to read it,” is how exec Mike Lacey is quoted. Oh, and Brugmann? Lacey also says your girlfriend’s busted, but he nailed her in ’82 anyway.

[Disclosure, perhaps: Mike Lacey once signed my paychecks. Well, okay, not actually himself.]

Technorati Tags: mike lacey, rulings, village voice media

Jury Says VVM Owes Slightly Crazy Newspaper Editor A Heartfelt Apology. Also, $15.6 Million.

Whoa. Seems a jury has slapped Village Voice Media with $15.6 million in damages in the predatory pricing suit brought against them almost four years ago by the San Francisco Bay-Guardian. Seems the goodwill generated for VVM execs in the press last year when a nutty local sheriff arrested them on bogus charges didn’t extend to the California courts. SFBG publisher Bruce Brugmann is, well, an obsessive neurotic whose ego got the better of his sanity when he abandoned his responsibility to protect his paper and employees just to bear out a grudge. (I know! Instead of trying to keep our newspaper afloat by actually competing with the uh, competition or whatever, let’s just sue them for being bigger and meaner than us and bank on a big fat settlement at the end to meet payroll!) Which is a point made convincingly in the statement VVM released after today’s decision. Not that it’s all that easy to see through all its swagger and watch-us-be-clever-ness. “Like Ralph Nader, Bruce Brugmann is out of touch with reality,” it reads. Ho! Ho. Hum. “We have not sought to injure the Bay Guardian; we just don’t want to read it,” is how exec Mike Lacey is quoted. Oh, and Brugmann? Lacey also says your girlfriend’s busted, but he nailed her in ’82 anyway.

[Disclosure, perhaps: Mike Lacey once signed my paychecks. Well, okay, not actually himself.]

Technorati Tags: mike lacey, rulings, village voice media