An attorney for former KMOV anchor Larry Conners has notified the St. Louis CBS affiliate that “legal action relating to the termination of Mr. Conners’ employment” is possible.

In a letter sent to KMOV general manager Mark Pimentel Thursday, an attorney for Conners requested the station “carefully preserve and not destroy any and all papers, records and documents relating to Mr. Conners’ employment and termination.”

The letter included a list of seven items to be saved, including Conners’ personnel file and communications between Pimentel and Belo Corp. about Conners. Merle Silverstein, the attorney, says the items “could be relevant to a possible legal action.”

Conners was fired from KMOV for claiming the IRS was targeting him after a tense interview with President Obama. Conners later admitted that his issues with the IRS began before the 2012 interview.

View the full letter from Conners’ attorney after the jump. Read more

A federal judge has refused to block New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL from airing surveillance camera footage of a supermarket altercation between store employees and an alleged shoplifter who died a month after the struggle.

WWL obtained the video from the St. Bernard Parish Sherriff’s Office for a report on the death of the alleged shoplifter, Norbert Gallego. The video shows Gallego, who was mentally disabled, “being tackled, then held down by two store employees for several minutes,” according to WWL. He was hospitalized for his injuries and remained in a coma for a month before he died.

The supermarket chain, Breaux Mart, asked for an injunction to stop the station from airing the footage Tuesday, according to the Associated Press:

Breaux Mart lawyers said one of the chain’s owners saw a promotion for WWL’s news report and recognized the surveillance footage. “The advertisement ended with a statement to the effect of ‘Why weren’t these men charged?’ leaving the viewer to infer that the Breaux Mart employees had committed a crime,” they wrote.

WWL reported that nobody was charged in Gallego’s death after the parish coroner, Bryan Bertucci, concluded he died of natural causes. Bertucci told WWL that it “wasn’t an easy case.”

Watch WWL’s report, which aired last night with the surveillance camera footage, after the jump. Read more

A legal battle between KOMO and the Seattle Police Department over access to police dashcam videos has reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The Seattle ABC affiliate reported on the case Tuesday:

The arguments before the Supreme Court are the last step in a years-long effort by KOMO to use police videos as a means of checking officer behavior. KOMO first requested a database and copies of Seattle police dashcam videos in 2010 during a Problem Solvers investigation about excessive force and biased policing.

In spite of numerous requests, the department told KOMO that the video records — the way the station asked for them — didn’t exist. After more than a year, the city did provide KOMO with a database, but then refused to supply the dashcam videos, saying there was a three-year exemption under the law.

“This is about every single citizen in the state of Washington and their right to have access to the videos that the police have, and their right to hold police accountable,” [KOMO news director Holly] Gauntt said.

KOMO reports the Supreme Court bypassed the appeals court and took the case directly, which can be done when the court believes there is “substantial public importance.” A decision is expected in three to six months.

Watch KOMO’s report after the jump. Read more

Arbitron has settled its lawsuit with Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC.

The radio ratings service sued WKYC in January for using Arbitron data in an ad campaign with the internet music service Pandora without authorization. The suit was for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and false designation of origin under the Lanham Act.

According to Arbitron, WKYC agreed to settle for an undisclosed sum. The Gannett NBC affiliate also agreed,

“not to engage in any activities that would infringe Arbitron’s intellectual property rights in its data, information, and audience estimates. Arbitron agreed not to pursue legal action against WKYC-TV as long as it complies with the terms of the settlement agreement.”

In a court case that may spell trouble for companies looking to charge a fee for the right to broadcast their content, an appeals court today upheld an earlier decision not to issue and injunction against internet streaming TV startup Aereo.

A group of 17 broadcasters including ABC, CBS, NBC Universal, Disney and Warner Brothers filed two suits against Aereo more than a year ago. One suit was an attempt to stop the service from streaming the broadcasters’ content to its subscribers.  The other seeks monetary damages for what they claim are copyright violations.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a two-to-one ruling, compared Aereo’s streaming device to the DVR provided by Cablevision to its subscribers,

“After a lengthy discussion of the facts and analysis of that decision, the district court concluded that Aereo’s system was not materially distinguishable from Cablevision’s Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder system, which we held did not infringe copyright holders’ public performance right.” Read more

Former news anchor Doug Rafferty is suing the Portland, ME, CBS affiliate WGME and its parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group for disability and age discrimination.

Rafferty had been an anchor at the station for 13 years before suffering a stroke on-air in 2006. According to the Portland Press Herald, Rafferty’s attorneys David Webbert and Matthew Keegan said Rafferty had fully recovered from the stroke by 2007.

In 2007, General Manager Terry Cole and News Director Robert Atkinson told Mr. Rafferty that the station was removing him from ‘the chair.’ In other words, the station was removing Mr. Rafferty from his anchor position,” says the seven-page complaint in the lawsuit. “When Mr. Rafferty was replaced as anchor, he was 55 years old. His replacement was in his early 40s.”

Rafferty stayed on at the station doing some broadcast work and eventually assumed a role behind the scenes. At the time, he told the Maine Sun Journal, “Leaving the anchor desk is hard, but change and excitement are some things I’ve been looking for. The daily grind of turning out half-hour newscasts is not doing it for me.” He also told the Sun-Journal the decision had nothing to do with the stroke he suffered. Read more

The former executive assistant to WTHR general manager John Cardenas has filed an age and sexual discrimination lawsuit against the Indianapolis NBC affiliate and Dispatch Broadcast Group, WTHR’s parent company. The Indianapolis Business Journal has details of the lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana:

In the suit, [Debbie] Wiley describes a work environment at WTHR that lacked any sort of grandeur. Wiley alleged Cardenas on multiple occasions was drunk while at work, “during which times his inappropriate behavior was even more exaggerated.”

Given her close working relationship with Cardenas as his assistant, “she bore the brunt of it,” Wiley’s attorney, Eric Pavlack, told IBJ. Wiley claims the station president also made inappropriate sexually suggestive “and/or romantically suggestive physical contact” with her.

At one point last June, she states in court records, “Cardenas was drunk at work and kept getting into my personal space, which made me uncomfortable. I reported this to management, as well.” Read more

Philadelphia County Judge Allan Tereshko has dismissed the remaining claims filed against former KYW anchor Larry Mendte by ex-co anchor Alycia Lane. Lane, currently an anchor at KNBC in Los Angeles, accused Mendte of invasion of privacy. The Philadelphia Daily News has details:

Tereshko dismissed the civil case filed against CBS 3, but had allowed some of the charges against Mendte to stand, pending further investigation.

Those final claims were dropped last week after the judge found that Lane had deleted key emails from her computer.

“As far as I’m concerned, Lane already got her pound of flesh from Larry in the federal criminal case. Larry has done nothing but try to make amends and move on, but she has nothing but vengeance in heart,” said Mendte’s attorney, Julia Morrow.

Lane’s attorney, who says the the judge was against Lane from the start of the trial, said he plans to appeal the ruling. He said he was “elated with happiness” by the final dismissal, which allows him to appeal the case to Superior Court.

Courthouse News Service is reporting a high school teacher in Cleveland, OH, is suing CBS affiliate WOIO for defamation after the station reported he had child pornography on his school computer despite warnings from the man’s lawyer the information was false.

In a complaint filed by Georgio Sabino III naming WOIO, LLC and reporter Ed Gallek, “Sabino says, his ‘former legal counsel contacted defendant Gallek and informed him that child pornography was not found on any of plaintiff’s computers and that any statements to the contrary were and would be false and asked defendant Gallek not to air the broadcast.’”

The station posted a story on its website saying child pornography was found on a computer Sabino used at the high school while teaching. In the complaint, Sabino said the station removed it after a second conversation with his lawyers. Read more

Kurt Knuttson, better known by his on-air persona “Kurt the CyberGuy,” is suing KTLA and several other Tribune stations for breach of contract and age discrimination, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Knuttson joined KTLA, Tribune’s CW affiliate in Los Angeles, as a technology reporter in 1995. He agreed to provide his reporting to KTLA in exchange for exposure, and within two years, his reports were being syndicated to other Tribune stations.

In 2008, he signed a five-year deal with the station, but two years later, his contract was terminated. Knuttson says he was informed that the deal would be renegotiated, but that he would be paid less. In 2011, he was informed he would no longer appear on the air.

THR has more details on Knuttson’s version of what happened next:

Despite being let go, Knutsson says his name and image continued for some time on the TV station’s websites, but when a viewer clicked on the link, they were shown consumer technology reports by Rich DeMuro instead, that were broadcast from the same studio as CyberGuy, with the same format and style

KTLA and the other stations never announced his departure to viewers. He says they also “manipulated content descriptions (keywords and metatags) in order to produce misleading results from common search engines so persons seeking Knutsson were routed to (DeMuro).” Read more